The Nathan Barry Show (Nathan Barry: Author, Designer, Marketer)
Explore every episode of The Nathan Barry Show
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Feb 2021 | 025: Louis Nicholls - Explode Your List Growth: Use a Referral Program | 00:59:11 | |
Louis Nicholls is the co-founder of SparkLoop, an email newsletter referral program where you can have each of your subscribers refer their friends to unlock cool rewards. SparkLoop is amazing. They’re growing really quickly in the audience-building space and ConvertKit actually gives away free SparkLoop accounts to all of our creative pro customers. In today’s show, Louis talks about how to increase your email list growth rate by more than 30% with a referral program. He also gives his (hot!) take on paid newsletters, discusses how best to monetize your audience, and so much more. Links & Resources
Louis Nicholls’ Links
Episode Transcript Louis: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:25] SparkLoop is amazing. They’re growing really quickly in the audience, in the audience building space and, ConvertKit’s actually an investor in SparkLoop and we give away SparkLoop accounts for free to all of our creative pro customers. So the article is so good. Talk about how to grow your email list by more than, or increase your email list growth rate by more than 30% with a referral program, as well as Louis’ take on paid newsletters, how best to monetize your audience and so much more. So let’s dive in. Louis, welcome to the show. Louis: [00:01:17] Nathan: [00:01:19] Louis: [00:01:32] So mainly e-commerce SaaS and so on. And I was at that point where I just sold my last company was kind of looking around for things to do and keeping myself kind of engaged. So I was running a small newsletter, doing a small course teaching founders, how to do sales and doing kind of like that classic. I call it marketing consulting, but really just kind of helping other founders who reached out with some kind of like consulting gigs. And one of them ended up being a paid newsletter in like the flight steals space. And they, I think they probably, at that point seeing what morning brew was doing with their referral program and they were really eager to add one in. So they asked if I knew of anyone who could help do that. And I said, well, I’ve done referral programs before. And the software I’ve used is from my friend, Manuel, who runs her federal hero. So I thought, well, if anyone knows what tool to do or what, what tool to use, it’s going to be Manuel. So I’ll ask him, reach out to Manuel. And he says, well, you can kind of make referral hero, do this with a lot of work. there isn’t really a better option out there. But it’s funny you say this cause you’re like the fourth person this week has asked me if we can get referral here at working with newsletters. So maybe we should look a bit into this together. And, that’s kind of, I think where it starts, if we didn’t originally planned the Spock week to be a new tool necessarily, we thought it could be kind of inside of referral Europe. But as we. Kind of understood more about exactly how it was supposed to work and kind of the integrations that newsletters need to be successful. We’ve realized it really needs its own dashboard and its own integrations. And at that point it may as well be a separate product. Nathan: [00:03:46] Louis: [00:03:55] Nathan: [00:04:03] Louis: [00:04:15] So, Punchbowl news, we just recently launched a using us front office sports, people like that. Nathan: [00:04:46] What are some of the things that people come in with and where do you either say, no, this is actually the best practice or like sort of reset their expectations. Louis: [00:05:16] I don’t know, 20%, 50% faster with a referral program, but 20 or 50% of five new subscribers a week, just isn’t worth the time you’d put into it. Right. And you could be cross posting or doing something way more useful at the tim... | |||
| 09 Jan 2023 | 073: Thomas Frank - How I Make Six Figures per Month as a Creator | 01:08:46 | |
Today I’m talking with Thomas Frank. Thomas built a YouTube channel called College Info Geek to over a million subscribers. Since then, he’s rebranded and grown the channel to nearly 3 million subscribers. He’s also built a massive business around courses and Notion templates. In this episode we talk about making a pivot as a creator. Thomas has an interesting and understated approach that’s worked quite well. We also talk about the Notion templates he’s selling, the YouTube productivity channel he started strictly about Notion, and how it’s driving hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales per month. Thomas also explains why it’s easier getting started on YouTube today than it was 10 years ago, and I get Thomas’ candid thoughts on how Gumroad’s new pricing has affected his business and creators in general. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Thomas’ Links (H5)
| |||
| 14 Mar 2022 | 064: Sahil Bloom - How To Unlock Growth as a Creator | 01:02:25 | |
In this episode I talk to Sahil Bloom. This is Sahil’s second time on the show. He’s doubled his audience from an already large number since then, and he’s now a full-time creator. Sahil is someone I’d love to have on the show every six months or every year. He’s putting out incredible content. I’ve probably learned more from Sahil in the last few months than I have from any other person. We talk about Twitter growth, monetization, growing a podcast, and newsletters. I also try to sell him on switching to ConvertKit. You can be the judge of how well I did to convince him. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources (H5)
Sahil Bloom’s Links (H5)
| |||
| 26 Apr 2021 | 033: Veni Kunche - 3 Years of Growth: 29x Subscribers & 34x Revenue | 01:00:14 | |
Veni Kunche runs Diversify Tech, a newsletter-based business all about helping people who are underrepresented break into the tech world. After working as a Software Engineer since 2003, her main goal now is to help make the tech industry inclusive. Veni’s got a really interesting business model: a mix of sponsorships and also a job board, taking advantage of the robust community that surrounds her newsletter. Nathan and Veni cover everything from how she transitioned from working in tech to starting her business. They dive deep into the mistakes companies make when seeking to hire a diverse team, and and what they can do differently. Veni also shares real numbers. Listen to the end to hear: • How much she’s making per month from her newsletter. Links & Resources Veni Kunche’s Links
Episode Transcript Veni: [00:00:00] And so those are the signals that they’re looking for. Nathan: [00:00:26] There’s a great opportunity there. Anyway, it’s a great episode. We cover everything from how she got started, transitioning from tech to starting her newsletter. We dive deep into companies who are looking to hire a diverse team and mistakes they make and what they can do differently, how transparency really matters. So there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Towards the end of the podcast, she gets into sharing the exact numbers behind the business, how much she’s making per month, how that’s changed over the last year. I think you’re going to love it. Let’s dive in. Veni, welcome to the show. Veni: [00:01:16] Nathan: [00:01:19] Veni: [00:01:30] The reason I started it is because when you’re underrepresented, when you’re in your workplace or in your college at college, or wherever you feel where you’re alone, and you don’t really have a network, of people like you. So I wanted to bring something where I could be that resource for people. Nathan: [00:02:19] Veni: [00:02:37] I think I want to try something on my own. So I started exploring how does one start a business? How does one? And I, you know, I learned that, you know, it takes quite some time to figure out who your customers are, customer market fit, you know, all of that. And as I was learning, I was also volunteering for the women who code chapter in DC here. And, as I was volunteering, I connected with a lot of women in tech and that’s when I realized that there are a lot more, floods than I thought, and blah, and everybody was trying to find each other kind of, to feel connected and to kind of talk through this, you know, our issues. and I started doing just online office hours. So I was like for 30 minutes, I would just get on Google Hangouts and talk with people. And I got connected with so many people from across the U.S. just by offering that. And then that’s when I realized, okay, everybody’s. It’s facing similar issues and we’re all discussing the same thing over in Oregon. So I thought, Oh, why don’t I start a newsletter where I can reach more people. So prior to Diversify Tech, I started a newsletter called Code With Veni, and I was like, Oh, I’ll share what I’m learning. And I will also, you know, share what other women in tech are doing. and you know, it was more supposed to be like inspirational and, you know, that’s how it started. And after a year of running that I started getting requests for sponsorships. People want it to sponsor the newsletter. People wanted to post jobs. Uh that’s when it finally clicked that I was like, Oh, I’m starting trying to start a business. And I think I actually started, okay. So that’s what it is like, Oh, once I started getting, receiving his foundation of, so I was like, Oh, this could be my business. So that’s when I was like, then I kind of pivoted off of good with many. Cause I didn’t want the branding to be just me. So, and then I also wanted to include not just women, but everybody who’s underrepresented in tech. So that’s when I kind of like Diversify Tech from that. Nathan: [00:04:54] Let’s talk sponsorships. That’s a great idea. Let’s you know, and then I imagine people are like, great, can I sponsor with my job listing, you know, or something like that. I’m trying to get it in front of a more diverse community. And so it was that where like the job board came in, Veni: [00:05:25] | |||
| 25 Oct 2021 | 053: Kimberly Brooks - Taking Intentional Breaks To Reignite Creativity | 01:06:51 | |
Kimberly Brooks is a contemporary American artist and author. Kimberly integrates landscape, figuration and abstraction to address subjects of history, memory and identity. Her work has been exhibited and featured internationality. Kimberly received her bachelor’s degree in literature from U.C. Berkeley, and was Valedictorian. She has taught art as a lecturer and adjunct faculty instructor, and was a featured speaker at TEDx Fullerton. In this episode, I talk with Kimberly about her work as an artist, author, and editor. We talk about how she uses ConvertKit to reach and grow her audience. We talk about what people can learn from fine art, and apply it to their newsletters. We also cover the path to becoming a successful creator, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Kimberly Brooks’s Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Kimberly: [00:00:29] Nathan: She built the whole art editorial section of the Huffington Post. She built that to millions of readers. She’s done all kinds of things in the design community from the early days. So, we riff on that; Mad Men-style ad agencies in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Some great stuff. Then she brings it all the way through to talking about what she does with ConvertKit. How she sets up her sequences, and everything else, and things that people can learn from fine art, and apply to their email newsletters and sequences. So, it’s a fun episode. We have to do a part two, because we filled up all the time we had, and I think I only got through half my questions. So, anyway, I’m going to get out of the way and dive in. So, here we go. Kimberly, welcome to the show. [00:01:37] Kimberly: [00:01:39] Nathan: [00:01:50] Kimberly: [00:01:51] Nathan: I can’t even think. Three years ago? Four? [00:02:01] Kimberly: I was actively looking for a better way to send art show announcements. Because I’m a painter, I’m an artist. I just felt after my previous experiences, I knew how important having a subscriber-based service was. I don’t want to get too nerdy, but I didn’t really like the competitor who shall remain unnamed. But, I found you guys, and I started getting the advertisement for the conference, and it was in Boise, Idaho. And so I thought, I’ll just go. It was like a Ted conference for really creative nerdy people like me, but it was exactly what I was wanting. It was about marketing, which is really such a weird word because it’s really about sharing, and I loved the title. I loved everything about it. I met some of the people that I’m really, really close with now. Then the next year it was canceled because of the pandemic, but it was amazing, and I met you, actually. [00:03:28] Nathan: And. Earning money directly in that way. And so I want, like, I want to hear that as you like weave in and out of these two worlds and then just your experience there. [00:04:02] Kimberly: Being an art to me was it was the pole, you know? So like my pole is art is making art and everything about what I do. I write about it. I interview people about it. I interview other artists about their work. I make paintings 90% of the time in my studio. Like, it’s all about art, you know? So that’s like the beginning. So I do see myself sashaying between different worlds. And I think everybody kind of does that. And then as the bicycle of technology was being built to use kind of lik... | |||
| 22 Feb 2021 | 026: Khe Hy - How You Can Do $10,000/Hr Work | 01:28:21 | |
Khe Hy’s been called the “Oprah for Millennials” by CNN, and his writing is all about transforming your relationship with time, work, money, and, ultimately, yourself. Today we talk about how he runs RadReads, his newsletter for over 25,000 people. It’s an incredible newsletter where Khe gets super tactical about Notion, but also goes deep on living a better life, organization, productivity, etc. The biggest highlight from this interview? Khe tells us about going from $100/hr work to $10,000/hr work. He’s not joking! Khe’s building a whole course—Supercharge your Productivity—on this very topic. Khe also shares useful insights for every newsletter author and online businessperson, including: • Finding the best marketing platform for your business. And so much more! Links & Resources
Khe Hy’s Links
Episode Transcript Khe: [00:00:00] And actually ironically like copywriting, you’ll probably land on some deeper human need that you have. Nathan: [00:00:29] Alright, few highlights that we dive into: One: $10,000 an hour work. Yep. He’s not joking. He actually means that; we dive into what exactly that looks like, what it means. We get into product launches. He shares the numbers from the launch that he’s in the middle of right as we record the episode. there’s a lot of great stuff. So I’m going to get out of the way and just let you dive in and listen to the episode with Khe. Khe, welcome to the show. Khe: [00:01:11] Nathan: [00:01:14] Khe: [00:01:26] Nathan: [00:01:37] Khe: [00:02:00] If you sign up, when you sign up RadReads is, it’s a newsletter and the blog about that helps people live intentional and Epic lives. And so what does that mean? the informal tagline is come for the productivity. Stay for the existential. And so we will lure you in with a text expanders, financial independence, retire, early notion, and then it would be like, what’s the deep underlying need that that’s really trying to satisfy. And so that is kind of the, the ethos, the vibe it’s playful, it’s inspired by surf culture or hip hop culture. and I write, so I read a ton. And through the writing, quite, quite new, actually almost approaching two years. I’ve, started an, course business related to that, but I’ve dabbled in so many other monetization, harebrained schemes along the way, but mostly now newsletter blog leads to, online courses. Nathan: [00:03:31] Khe: [00:03:51] I worked on Wall Street. I was a really good kid. I like buying sat books and all that stuff. and so I just put my head down and did the work, and never really thought about anything else. Just get on the escalator and stay there. I did that, that brought me to wall street, 14 years on Wall Street. And, I had a really good career and I had, hopefully what’s a third of a life crisis. you know, it’s 30, 35 years old. I was probably a little bit, not exactly a third, but, I was just kind of, I was doing great. I was doing great. I was, yeah, in that, that world, uh, made a made man in the sense that if I just didn’t screw up, I would never have a financial worry for the rest of my life. But I was bored as heck. Nathan: [00:05:06] Khe: [00:05:09] And I’m just going to be an expert in this thin, thin sliver. I, I basically studied robot trading. So like actually all this Robinhood stuff is like, Like the end of what’s happening right now is what I studied, like the rails of, of wall street. And so I was a little agitated. I was just like, what’s the point? What’s the point? I had some savings about 18 months of savings, where I could just burn through them and try something new. It took a couple years, but I just quit. I quit without a plan. the only little anchor in this crazy C of uncertainty w... | |||
| 17 May 2021 | 036: Ann Handley - How Expert Marketers Get More Subscribers | 00:45:39 | |
Ann Handley is the founder and Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs, a marketing and training education company with more than 600,000 subscribers. She is a well-known public speaker, and has been writing a newsletter called Total Annarchy for the last three years. Ann is also a Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, and Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. Ann was named a top thought leader by Forbes and one of the seven people shaping modern marketing by IBM. In this episode, Nathan and Ann discuss: Links & Resources Ann Handley’s Links
Episode Transcript Ann: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:27] So in this episode, we talk about a whole range of things like what she thinks of the multiple rises of email newsletters over the years. The trend email is dead. The balance between email and social media platforms. We get into algorithms. We talk about really a whole range of things. Probably my favorite is when we get into talking about style and voice and how you write, how to make things fun. Her newsletter is called Total Annarchy. Annarchy, it’s spelled like her name. And so you can see if that gives you an idea of the way she likes to write, the energy and passion that she brings to a business and marketing topics. So, anyway, with that, I’ll get out of the way and let’s dive into the show. Ann thanks for joining me. Ann: [00:01:28] Nathan: [00:01:30] Ann: [00:01:41] Nathan: [00:01:43] Ann: [00:01:55] It’s, you know, small enough that it’s just me in here, me and my, and my little dog who’s here with me now. Little tiny porch on the front and a hard wire internet connection. And that’s it. So I built it as a place to really, as I said, do my best work as a place to write, essentially that was just sequestered from everybody else that, that I couldn’t hear anybody breathe back here. It was just, you know, a hundred percent perfect. And then, you know, fast forward COVID happens. And suddenly my tiny house is now thrust onto the international stage. It’s, you know, now the backdrop for all of these online programs that I’m doing, which is fine. Just that I kind of had to clean things up a little bit. So, so yeah, its kind of been forced into that, the white hot lights of the internet suddenly and the tiny house it’s doing its best back here, but this is not necessarily what it was before originally. Nathan: [00:03:13] Ann: [00:03:22] And, and I use that mostly, you know, like in the, in the deep winter, it, this place is not insulated. As you can tell by the plywood background here again, this was supposed to be just for me. I didn’t understand that this was going to be, who knew it was going to be a subjected to the internet on a daily basis at this point. But yeah, so it’s, it essentially built it, you know, for me, this is a place to, to come back when I really just needed some space and some quiet. It actually turns out to be probably, like the best investment I ever made. As a writer, it’s just been such a gift to have this place back here. And you know, even in pre pandemics times, that was true. But especially now, because it does feel like it’s a world away from anything going on, not just in my house, but in my town and my state and my community, anything beyond it, you know? So it’s kind of nice just to have this one, place that as a writer, as a creator, you can feel like, all right, it’s all mine. Oxygen is back here, you know? Nathan: [00:04:43] It’s a good trend. Ann: [00:05:12] So, you know, there’s all kinds of diff... | |||
| 21 Dec 2020 | 018: Anne-Laure Le Cunff – Building a Loyal Audience & Growing Your Newsletter | 00:59:52 | |
Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the founder of Ness Labs, which applies neuroscience research to productivity and creativity. In addition to writing articles and running a growing community, Anne-Laure also writes a newsletter subscribed to by over 25,000 “mindful makers”. In this conversation, we talk about building up a newsletter audience from zero. Anne-Laure tells us why newsletters grow differently from other platforms, like YouTube channels, and why you shouldn’t get discouraged when your subscriber numbers hit a plateau—often, if you just keep writing and sending great emails, the next wave of growth is right around the corner. We discuss the difference between Twitter and SEO as channels for gaining new subscribers, and the importance of saying “no” to all the things your business shouldn’t focus on right now. Anne-Laure also explains why she’s not pursuing brand awareness for her newsletter, and why she’s focused on maintaining the contract with her readers first and foremost. Links & Resources
Anne-Laure’s Links
Anne: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:13] Anne: [00:00:30] Nathan: [00:00:31] When I get going, like, what was the impetus behind that? Anne: [00:00:54] So publicly committing to sending a weekly newsletter about the topics I was studying at school was a way to force myself. To keep on doing it. I didn’t want people to be like, where’s the newsletter. I should say she would have it. Right. So that’s like, that’s where I was just, I just told people, Hey, every Thursday you can expect an email about when you were a science for me. Nathan: [00:01:35] Anne: [00:01:40] I’m going to keep on writing. And then I was like, that’s like, no, that’s not healthy. Are you doing stuff? Writing? This is okay. And, um, the two other times, I actually announced it in the, the edition before, because I read it out about mental health and balance and mindful mindfulness. And this is part of it too, knowing when it’s better to just skip one newsletter so you can stick to it over the long run. Rather than burning out because you’re trying to be overly sustainable to a point where you’re hurting your own mental health. So I did skip a few ones, but I’m okay with it. I think what’s more important is to be able to stick with it over the long run. Nathan: [00:02:37] I’m not missing a newsletter, I’m taking a break. And I think that’s something that, um, Paul Jarvis has done really well where, you know, he’s had his newsletter going for many, many years, and then he’ll say like, okay, I’m taking December off or I’m taking the summer off, you know, something like that. And it’s just, uh, a good way to give yourself that break so that you can, you know, have the consistency and then, you know, readers know what to expect. We are consistent with newsletters, so that. Readers can check in and know, uh, you know, really consistently what to pay attention to. I remember one of the, the first people that I followed is Chris Guillebeau. Uh, he wrote the a hundred dollars startup and a bunch of other great books. And he would post every Monday and every Thursday at like 10:00 AM or 9:00 AM on the dot. And I, for whatever reason, I wasn’t on his email list. I don’t know why. But I would actually just be like, Oh, it’s Monday at 10. Like, and I would go and like, look for the poster. And if it was there on nursery day, it would go read it. And it’s just interesting how like, well, you can get trained to, you know, go to the place where the good content is. If the creator sticks to the schedule. Anne: [00:03:51] And they’re very worried. The person is trying to build an audience. You need to have some sort of contract with your audience where you tell them, Hey, you’re giving me your email address. You’re giving me access to the most intimate part of the internet for you. You’re giving me that that’s precious in exchange what I’m giving youthe contract is going to be—is that you’re going to receive. One or two newsletters a week from me on these days and I’m not going to break that contract. So I think it’s quite important to be consistent if you want to build that loyalty with your audience. Nathan: [00:04:50] And I’m ev... | |||
| 08 May 2023 | 075: Susie Bulloch – Transitioning From Digital to Physical Products With Purpose | 01:06:59 | |
In this episode, I talk to Susie Bulloch, who runs Hey Grill, Hey, which started as a wildly successful food blog (to the tune of a million dollars or more a year in revenue). Then she did something that I absolutely love: she used her online business to kickstart a physical products company. Her sauces and rubs company in the barbecue space is now about to overtake the blog in revenue. The online world of content creation is vastly different to the product manufacturing space, and as Susie explains, she is grateful that she didn’t know too much before she made the transition. Her top piece of advice for anyone interested in doing the same thing is to make products with the intention of fulfilling a need, not just because you have an audience online. Susie describes herself as “terrifyingly driven,” and during our conversation, she talks about how she went from “I could never” to doing it all, the importance of celebrating business milestones, the value of having someone ask you, “Why?” regularly on your entrepreneurial journey, and her goal of increasing the representation of women-owned brands in the barbeque space! In this episode, you'll learn:
Links & Resources: Susie Bulloch Links: Follow Susie on Twitter Follow Susie on Facebook Follow Susie on Instagram Follow Susie on YouTube Subscribe to Susie's Grill Squad | |||
| 22 May 2023 | 077: Darrell Vesterfelt – Running a 101,000-Person Online Summit | 01:03:35 | |
Today, I talk to Darrell Vesterfelt, who is a longtime friend who helped grow ConvertKit in our craziest growth times (from $100,000/mo when he joined to $500,000/mo in just over a year). Darrell is one of the best marketers I know. He is the Founder and former CEO of Good People Digital, the Co-Founder of Homestead Living, and Co-Founder and COO of the School of Traditional Skills. In this episode, Darrell breaks down the goal and execution of an online summit that accumulated an astonishing 101,000 attendees as a brand-new brand! Tune in to find out why you can’t have a marketing strategy without value and vice versa. In this episode, you'll learn:
Links & Resources: Darrell Vesterfelt Links: Darrell’s website Follow Darrell on LinkedIn Follow Darrell on Twitter Follow Darrell on Instagram | |||
| 15 Mar 2021 | 029: Codie Sanchez - The Key to Becoming a Future Billionaire | 00:58:16 | |
Codie Sanchez runs the amazing newsletter Contrarian Thinking, whose topics include passive income, generational wealth, contrarian investing, and learning from strivers who think big. Her motto is “Question everything and stack income streams”, and that’s exactly what we talk about in this episode. Not just “how to build a newsletter”, but one of Nathan’s favorite topics: how to build wealth! You’ll learn how Codie went from journalist to investor to partner in a fund, and how she runs her 100,000-subscriber newsletter plus other companies besides. Codie talks growing a newsletter from 100 subscribers to 1,000 and beyond, but that’s not all. Tune in and find out:
It’s a great show! Links & Resources
Codie Sanchez’s Links
Episode Transcript Codie: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:32] And then now she’s in not just investing, where she’s a partner in a fund, what was the investing in cannabis companies, but she’s also running a newsletter, with over a hundred thousand subscribers, which is pretty crazy. And we get into how to monetize the newsletter, how to grow it, her take on the creator economy, so many other things. So it was a great conversation and let’s dive in. Codie, thanks for coming on the show. Codie: [00:01:19] Nathan: [00:01:20] Why is it something that you, what about so much on all your social channels and your newsletter and everything else? Codie: [00:01:44] I like the act of creating and if you don’t have the financial resources to actually do the creative, and then there are all of these pressures that get put upon you, and I don’t think you get control of the art. And so that would probably be one of my main reasons. And then secondarily, I just think financial freedom without financial freedom, you don’t have any freedoms. And so that’s sort of one of the building blocks, I think, crucial for people to get. Nathan: [00:02:29] Codie: [00:02:46] And that was first you had labor, then you had capital. Then you had code. Then you had audience. Now Naval Ravikant talks about the first three. he doesn’t mention the fourth and the fourth I think is really, in my opinion will be sort of the next frontier, the creator economy, and leveraging your audience in order to get different revenue streams. Because audience is really fascinating in that it’s like an annuity, meaning that it can cashflow consistently, but instead of annuity—only having one revenue stream, you know, they pay you out based on the investment that you make—audience can have have a billion revenue streams. And so anyway, when I think about leverage, I don’t think about it as a financial way. Lots of people think about leverage. Like you loaned me a dollar and I take that dollar and go do something else with it. but the world we live in today that was old school leverage, you know, that was the leverage that created. Basically the biggest Titans of industry in the US: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds—they were all created right after banking was established. So the banks came out, capital was created. These guys made a ton of money, and then you had code come out, software, right? Robots in the form of software and the next biggest billionaires were created. That’s the Jobs, that’s the Elon Musk, etc. And now in the next realm, I think those with audience will be the next sort of wave of billionaires that are created. And they’re all enabled based on code to some degree. but I think that’ll be the next evolution. So if you are able to understand leverage in a modern day format meaning not just human capital, the most inefficient form—labor like you and I working for living and renting out our time—and not just money like me and the fund, having a bunch of other people... | |||
| 09 Aug 2021 | 046: Sahil Bloom - Why Writing Makes You a Better Investor | 01:00:25 | |
Sahil Bloom is Vice President at Altamont Capital Partners, a generalist investment fund managing over $2.5 billion in capital. At Altamont, Sahil helps lead the consumer products and services sector. Sahil also participates in board activities at Altamont’s portfolio companies Fox Racing, and Brixton. Sahil is an angel investor in over 25 tech startups. He works with entrepreneurs and founders to build scalable and sustainable value for all stakeholders. Sahil also publishes a popular newsletter about business, mental models, economics, and more. Sahil graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in economics & sociology, and holds a master’s degree in public policy. While at Stanford, Sahil was a four-year member of the Stanford baseball team. Sahil is also a two-time recipient of the Bruce R. Cameron Memorial Award. This award honors students exhibiting excellence in athletics, academics, and leadership. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Sahil’s Links
Episode Transcript Sahil: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:27] I had no idea that his 200,000 plus Twitter followers have been in the last 14 months, basically since COVID. So, in this episode, we talk about growing a Twitter audience. We talk about all kinds of things. Sahil was a baseball pitcher for Stanford. And so we get into the new name/image/likeness rules for the NCAA. What else? There’s all kinds of good stuf: his creative writing process, his mental models, how he thinks about income versus wealth. It’s the kind of episode that I absolutely love some. So I’m going to get out of the way and let you listen to it. But really quick, if you’d do me a favor and go ahead and subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, wherever you listen to the podcast, and then write a review, I’d appreciate it. It will help the podcast reach a few more people. So, all right. Let’s dive in. Sahil, thanks for joining me. Sahil: [00:01:34] Nathan: [00:01:35] Sahil: [00:01:50] Like Packy is one of my favorite writers, does an incredible job. Mario, over at the The Generalist. A lot of these folks, I mean, Pomp was one of the early ones to do it. A lot of these folks have built these scale platforms, these audiences, and then as a result of that, and as a result of the reach and the leverage that they’re able to get on, having that kind of owned audience in a certain extent, to a certain extent, they’re able to really support these companies. And so, as an investor, as an advisor, you can kind of just create this natural flywheel around it, where your content creation and the creative work is the leading into, these really interesting investment and capitalists opportunities. And then because of those, you’re actually getting more content to write about. It actually is creating this really unique, flywheel that I think we’re really in the early days of candidly, like, we’ve seen a lot of people starting to do it, but it’s very much the first inning in my opinion. And I think there’s a massive shakeout happening in the investment world because of it. All of the VC is, and all of these growth equity funds are just starting to realize that in order to win deals, in order to be a part of these cap tables and really provide value, you know, they’ve said, how can we be helpful as like the joke moniker for a long time, but in order to really be helpful, you need to be able to do tangible things for the companies that you’re supporting and investing in. And these creator capitalists, I do feel like have figured that out and I don’t put myself in the same ranks as those people that I mentioned at all. I’m kind of very green and new to this, but, it’s been fun to start see the early fruits of that. Nathan: [00:03:42] I don’t know if it’s just the next generation of creators doing this, but it’s much more Twitter forward rather than starting with a blog and a Twitter, a newsletter. do you see other continuations or differences between like sort of the previous generation in the second generation. Sahil: [00:04:17] | |||
| 18 Oct 2021 | 052: Jay Gilbert - Newsletter Insights From an Entertainment Industry Veteran | 01:00:12 | |
My guest on this episode is music industry veteran, Jay Gilbert. Jay wears a lot of hats. He’s a musician, photographer, marketer, speaker, and music executive. Jay has worked as a creative consultant to many record companies and artists. He hosts The Music Biz Weekly Podcast, is a Co-founder of Label Logic, and runs the weekly music newsletter Your Morning Coffee. Label Logic helps artists, managers, and labels grow their audience and optimize their presence across all platforms. Jay’s newsletter is curated to give a weekly snapshot of the new music business. It’s everything you need to know, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning. I talk with Jay about his shift to being a content creator. We talk about life as a musician, working in the music industry, and being a photographer. We also talk about his management company, and his advice for creators wanting to build their audience. Jay also shares some behind the scenes stories, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Jay Gilbert’s Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Jay: [00:00:26] Nathan: It’s the thing that everyone in the music industry is reading every Friday morning. We talk about how he grew that, his passion for the music industry, how the industry has shifted, what’s working, what’s not. He also runs a management company called Label Logic where they’re partnering with, artists and managers, and doing these album releases, and so much else. He’s got all these behind the scenes stories, and a lot of advice that is not only for the music industry, but also for any creator looking to build an audience, and endure long enough to get noticed, and to build a brand and everything else. It’s really good towards the end. I also sneak in some selfish questions about what would he do to grow ConvertKit; what’s his advice for ConvertKit entering the music industry. Jay, welcome to the show. [00:01:39] Jay: [00:01:41] Nathan: We’ll dive into some of your background, what you’re working on now, but you actually had a pretty big project launch today. What did you launch today? [00:01:54] Jay: We’ve recorded this really great record. We’ve got some amazing videos, given his relationships in that area. They’re quite special. We launched a window of exclusivity this morning with People Magazine. So, if you go to People.com, you’ll see. the video is debuting. It’s pretty special, and we’re really excited about it. It gets released tomorrow. The song’s called 11:11, by Ben Barnes. It’s pretty cool. I think you’ll dig it. [00:02:53] Nathan: [00:03:09] Jay: You got to check out shadow and bone. My, my wife and I binged watched it. And he’s, he’s brilliant in that, but it’s a really cool series. [00:03:21] Nathan: [00:03:32] Jay: [00:03:33] Nathan: [00:03:38] Jay: So we both worked at universal for a long time. He was there 20 years. I was there 18 years. I worked at Warner music, for five years managing Amazon’s business for we at ADA, globally, which was fantastic. but we decided to do our own things. It’s about seven years ago, give or take, [00:04:16] Nathan: <... | |||
| 14 Nov 2022 | 072: Brian Feroldi - How to Skyrocket Your Twitter Growth | 00:53:41 | |
In this episode I talk to Brian Feroldi. Brian is an incredible creator in the investing space. He Tweets about money, investing, and self-improvement. He also has a free newsletter with over 40,000 subscribers. Today Brian talks about his recent experience migrating his newsletter to ConvertKit. He’s also a member of the ConvertKit Sponsor Network. I haven’t said much about the Sponsor Network, so Brian shares how he’s using it to book sponsors. The bulk of our conversation, however, is about Twitter and how he’s grown his account to over 400,000 followers. Brian has an interesting idea using your Twitter profile as a sales page, and he explains why conversion rates are important. We also pull up my Twitter profile and Brian gives it a tear down live on the show. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources (H5) Brian’s Links (H5) | |||
| 24 May 2021 | 037: Nat Eliason - Making Money From Your Course Before You Launch | 01:06:03 | |
Nat Eliason is the founder of Growth Machine, a successful SEO and content marketing agency. Nat also teaches the popular Roam course, Effortless Output. Nat earned his B.A. in Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University, and has worked for companies such as Zapier, and Sumo Group. Nat co-hosts the Made You Think podcast with Neil Soni. Nat also writes a weekly newsletter called Monday Medley. Each Monday Medley has ten articles, videos, discussions, pieces of research, or other interesting finds from around the Internet, spanning a broad range of topics. In this episode Nat discusses the evolution of his newsletter. He shares his strategies on developing online courses. He also explains how to find product-market fit before launching a course or product. Highlights of the conversation include:
Links & Resources
Nat Eliason’s Links Episode Transcript Nat: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:26] I love the way that he’s not trying to grow and optimize everything. And then also the way that he’s taking internet money and bringing it into like tangible, real world life experiences, connection with friends, things like that. So it’s a great episode. I hope you enjoy it. And, actually before we dive in, I’d love for two things. One, if you’re listening to the podcast and you just clicked through from random clips or things like that, and you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and subscribe in iTunes, Spotify, and, you know, wherever you listen to podcasts, really appreciate that. And then the other thing is, I realized I’ve never actually asked for reviews and it turns out reviews help, you know, with rankings and more people to discover the show. So I would love it if you would go on iTunes in particular. Is iTunes a thing? Apple podcasts, I guess you go on Apple podcasts in particular and subscribe and then write a review or just a rating. That’ll help more people discover the show. So thanks for doing that. And let’s dive into the interview. Alright, Nat, thanks for joining me. Nat: [00:01:40] Nathan: [00:01:41] Nat: [00:01:51] Nathan: [00:02:08] Nat: [00:02:10] So, I’ve been sending it out every single Monday for five years straight, which is kind of absurd. I actually, I have no idea how I haven’t messed one up in that time, but here we are. Nathan: [00:02:34] Nat: [00:02:37] Nathan: [00:02:42] Nat: [00:02:52] So, I saw Shane Parrish start his, brain food kind of newsletter for Farnam Street. And, Tim Ferris had launched his like Five Bullet Friday, around that time too. So the Medley started as very similar to those two where it was like, you know, here’s like something interesting. I read this week. Here’s like a video I enjoyed just kind of like a little, link dump. And it was kind of that way for two or three years probably. And then it transitioned into kind of a different vibe where I got a lot of inspiration from Azeem Azhar and his Exponential View newsletter, which is like really, really good. And I just loved how, like, he wasn’t really just sharing stuff that he found interesting. He was kind of like going in depth on each thing. And what I liked about his was I felt like a lot of the link dumpy newsletters were, they didn’t feel very like high effort or very high value. And it was just like, okay, like, here’s kind of like a dump of things, but you can kind of get that from Twitter or elsewhere, plus like everyone was doing it right. It wasn’t that special anymore. So I was trying to think of how I can make it higher value. Azeem’s was such a great model because he was like going into detail on each thing. So I shifted in that direction first, where it was like, okay, here’s, you know, five, six, seven things from this week that are interesting. They’re kind of lik... | |||
| 08 Mar 2021 | 028: Packy McCormick - How Much Are 30,000 Subscribers Worth? | 00:59:46 | |
Packy McCormick writes the popular newsletter Not Boring, which is all about strategy and investing, from big companies to small. Packy was the VP of experience at a company called Breather, but when he left that role to start another startup he ended up creating a blockbuster newsletter instead! Not Boring has grown to over 30,000 subscribers. Packy’s newsletter is generating fantastic revenue, and his business model is a little different from the paid subscriptions that are popular right now. He dives into all the specifics. If you’re curious just how much you can make from a 30,000-subscriber mailing list, don’t miss this episode! In additional to business models and why he chose his, Packy also talks about the tactics that worked to rapidly grow his newsletter past 30,000 subscribers, the difference between being a writer and being an investor, and more. Links & Resources
Packy McCormick’s Links
Episode Transcript Packy: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:25] He’s got some pretty fantastic revenue. He dives into the specifics. So if you’re curious how much you can make off of a 30,000-subscriber mailing list, we talked about that. One of my favorite things is we get into business models. Paid subscription, is that best, or selling products or sponsorships? And so we dive in Packy shares why he chose the model that he did and why he thinks that’s the best for his audience. So it’s a really fun, wide ranging conversation. I think you’re going to enjoy it. Packy, welcome to the show. Packy: [00:01:12] Nathan: [00:01:13] Packy: [00:01:19] And what I really loved writing about recently is as business strategy companies, big companies, small, and mixing that with finance, that’s taken a couple of years, but I think I’ve kind of hit this sweet spot where it’s a more fun approach to these topics that are kind of. Not super fun normally, which is business analysis and finance and the stock market. So I’m just trying to, you know, make it approachable, fun, and enjoyable while you’re learning something. Yeah. Nathan: [00:02:01] Packy: [00:02:06] An absolutely horrendous job of monetizing. So talked about it through the lens of professor Scott Galloway wrote a piece. And so what was wrong with that piece? And then what I thought that Twitter should do and why I think that Twitter is actually undervalued and this idea of like, you know, once things start kind of changing for Twitter, there’s so much love for the company that I think people are just gonna pile into the stock. A lot of this is about being lucky. I wrote this on Monday, they reported earnings on Tuesday and it’s up like 27% since I wrote about it. So just got super lucky on timing there, but there’s a lot of that like kind of combining how they should think about business strategy and then how that parlays into the market. So it’s less really quantitative and more like, here’s kind of what everybody’s saying about this company. Here’s what they’re doing. Here’s what maybe they should be doing. And if they do that, here’s what it might look like today. For example, I wrote about, Y angel at early stage valuations are not as crazy as they seem based on the fact that Amazon and Apple and Facebook and all these huge companies have grown actually way faster than the average startup valuation has round by round by round. And so just kind of walking through that, but then weaving in. The movie up as an analogy and, you know, the four minute mile. And so just try to like, make it super fun and approachable. Nathan: [00:03:31] It’s just so much fun. and then I was like, this is a compelling case and I’ve owned, you know, Twitter stock for years, but not very much. I bought more, after that article, so you’re already making me money. Packy: [00:03:52] They’re just being mistreated by the market, all these things and, and made a, I think a fairly compelling bull case. And then they popped for totally different reasons. Something that I did not write about, but people came out of the woodwork and were like, Oh, thank you so much. I bought Slack because you said to buy Slack and bill. And I got a little bit scared, frankly, because I was like, I’m not a professional, I’m not a registered advisor. I’m not like. Amazing. If you like, then go do your own due diligence, I love that you’re investing, but it’s scary now that the audience is big enough that people are actually putting money behind the things that I’m writing, which is why. Nathan: [00:04:33] | |||
| 14 Dec 2020 | 017: David Perell - Mastering Twitter to Grow Your Newsletter and Make Money | 00:56:27 | |
David Perell is known as “The Writing Guy” on Twitter, but did you know his email newsletter has over 40,000 subscribers? Not only that, but he sends THREE newsletters a week… every week! In this in-depth conversation, David shares exactly how he uses Twitter to grow his audience, how he maintains consistency with such a high rate of output, and how he’s built an amazingly profitable business by monetizing his newsletters with his breakthrough writing course. We discuss the top 3 ways for a writer to make money from their work and reputation. Should you: • Become a consultant? • Sell courses? • Start a company? David breaks down when each model makes sense, and whether people like Ben Thompson of Stratechery would be better off starting companies instead of selling paid newsletters. David explains why new writers should focus on quantity over quality—and when to flip that around. He also covers the small tweaks that turn your articles from flash-in-the-pan to evergreen. You’ll learn what to focus on when you’re just starting your newsletter, and the language to use on subscription forms to get people to sign up (hint: it’s not, “Sign up for my newsletter!”) Plus, how David sends 3 newsletters every week with less than 2 hours of work! Links & Resources
David: [00:00:00] This is one of the things I think a lot of people get wrong about getting more email subscribers is they’ll say something like sign up for my newsletter. No one cares. I say something like you will learn how to take ideas and then turn them into structured writing. Then you will learn how to distribute that structured writing. And then you will learn how to build a system to do this. It’s very specific and it’s very useful to the reader in so far as you have those three things, your conversion rates will go way up. Nathan: [00:00:34] Today on Art of Newsletters, I’m joined by David Perell, who has an incredible newsletter that he’s grown to over 40,000 subscribers. We dive into how he uses Twitter to grow his audience. He blows my mind with what he does on Twitter. we had a new, his research processes, how he sends out three newsletters a week really consistently. And then the biggest thing is how he monetizes list. he just makes an incredible amount of money off of the courses that he puts out there really, really high quality. And I think it’s a great model for anyone looking to build their audience and earn a living from their audience in particular. So with that, let’s dive in. All right, David, welcome to the show. David: [00:01:14] Thank you, Nathan. I’m a huge fan of both you and the company that you’ve built. I ConvertKits one of the most important platforms in my life. And thank you very much for all that you do. Nathan: [00:01:26] Oh, that’s great to hear. Well, I’m excited to share a lot of your story. We’ve known each other. What? Only a year or two. Maybe not, not that long, but I dunno, we both admire each other on Twitter and you know, I see you post stuff and I’m like, Oh, That’s an idea that I had, but phrased way better. So I’m excited to tell your story and to share a lot of the tips and tricks for building a billion newsletter. Why don’t we start just tell people about the Write of Passage, your newsletter, you know, kind of like give the high level view of the newsletter and your business and how it all works. David: [00:02:03] Yeah. So the way that I think about newsletters is that I guess I would segment it into two buckets. The first is the weekly newsletters that I send, which are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Monday is Monday musing, sort of a update of my life. And just the coolest things I’m learning. Wednesday is a email that comes out with every podcast that I publish. And that is quotes from the podcast links to YouTube videos. And then Friday. Is four or five links that I find every single week and that those are really the weekly ones. And then there’s a whole other thing or element to how I think about newsletters. And I run a writing course called Write of Passage. And whenever we open for enrollment, which is twice a year, we have 10 days to basically take emails and. People who have signed up and said, Hey, I’m really interested in this. And then other people have just been following along. We might be able to tip over the edge and we have two enrollment periods to get them in the course. And so for that, we use more advanced tactics like lead scoring, which we hadn’t had as native integration, which you have now in ConvertKit. And then also just sending out a very. Detailed and rigorous series of emails, mostly through the sequences tab. And then just through daily emails that we send to people who are interested in taking the course. So that’s how I really think of it. It’s the weekly emails. And then when things get really crazy leaning on ConvertKit, to make sure that we get our emails sent out to prospective students. Nathan: [00:03:46] Nice. So if we go and actually, if you wouldn’t mind sharing some numbers, what’s the, like how many subscribers do you have on the newsletter now? And, and if there’s any revenue numbers, you’re okay with sharing. David: [00:03:58] Yes. So we have 43,000 subscribers on the newsletter. And then for students, what we do is about 600 to 700 students a year, then the course. Is $3,000 as of now for the premium or for the standard edition and then about $5,000 for lifetime access. But we also give about six figures in scholarships every single year. And so you can do the math there and it’s also growing so fast that any revenue number I gave now would basically not be valid in six months. Nathan: [00:04:34] Yeah. That’s a good problem to have. I like that. That’s set up. So let’s go back and. You know, when you’re looking at first starting an email list or first starting a newsletter, what made you go down this road? What was the spark that said, like, this is a good way to spend my time. David: [00:04:51] Yeah. Everybody, who I spoke to and trusted, basically said something along the lines of at the end of the day, when it comes to selling products online, everything is in consequential except for the number of email subscribers that you have. And I took that to heart. I started off on Twitter. Been trying to grow my YouTube channel, but e... | |||
| 15 Nov 2021 | 056: Matthew Kepnes - Making Your Competition Irrelevant as an Influencer | 01:04:53 | |
Matthew Kepnes runs the popular travel blog, Nomadic Matt, and also writes a successful newsletter. In fact, Matt’s newsletter is one of the biggest I’ve had on the show. His book, How to Travel the World on $50, is a New York Times Best Seller. After a 2005 trip to Thailand, Matt decided to leave his job, finish his MBA, and travel the world. Since then, he’s been to nearly 100 countries, and hasn’t looked back. Besides being a New York Times best-selling author, Matt’s writings have been featured in countless publications. He’s a regular speaker at travel trade shows, and is the founder of FLYTE, a non-profit organization that sends students overseas to bring their classroom experience to life. I talk with Matt about his unique approach to running his business. While others are building online courses, Matt has shifted to doing more in-person meetups and events. We talk about his newsletter, and we also talk about growing your Instagram follower count, scaling a business as a solopreneur, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Matthew Kepnes’ Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Matthew: [00:00:33] Nathan: Matt’s got a travel blog that’s wildly popular, and he gets into that—shares all the numbers. He’s probably one of the biggest newsletters that I’ve had on the show, so far. What I love about him, in particular, is how thoughtful he is about his business model. Most people are just adding more courses and figuring out how to grow revenue; honestly, what’s now fairly traditional ways, and it’s quite effective. Matt takes another approach. He gets into in-person events and meetups. We get to talk about why in a busy, crowded online world, he’s actually going offline. I think that Blue Ocean Strategy he references, the popular book by the same title, I think it’s interesting, and it’s something worth considering when some of the online strategies don’t work. We also get into a bunch of other things like growing his newsletter. Like I said, it’s quite large. Then, also growing an Instagram following. Instagram is not something that I’m going to actively pursue, but it’s interesting hearing his approach of what you do if you’re at 5,000 followers on Instagram, and want to grow to 50,000 or more. So, anyway, enjoy the episode. If you could do me a favor and go subscribe on Spotify or iTunes, or wherever you listen if you aren’t subscribed already, and then write a review. I check out all the reviews. Really appreciate it. It helps in the rankings, and I’m just looking to grow the show. So, anyway, thanks for tuning in today. Let’s go talk to Matt. Matt, welcome to the show. [00:02:06] Matthew: [00:02:10] Nathan: [00:02:26] Matthew: [00:02:33] Nathan: [00:02:35] Matthew: [00:02:36] Nathan: [00:02:39] Matthew: [00:02:43] Nathan: I actually want to start talking about that side of it, because I’ve been in the blogging world for 11 years now. But even I feel like things changed so much in the first couple of years, even before I entered into the world. So, I’m curious, going back to the early days, what were the prompts for you to come into the blogging world and say, “Hey, I’m going to start publishing online”? [00:03:10] Matthew: And then, you know, everyone was really excited in the beginning. And then after a while I got sick in my update because the know their back of their office job. So I kinda just forgot about it until I came home and January, 2008 and I need money. And so I started a temp job, and I had a lot of free time and I really just hate... | |||
| 04 Jan 2021 | 020: Dan Runcie - From Sending Newsletters to High-Paid Consulting | 00:55:14 | |
Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital, the newsletter that breaks down the business of hip hop. We learn all about his favorite hip hop artists, of course, but he also shares what indie creators can learn from the world of hip hop and so much more. Having switched from a lucrative paid newsletter to a consulting business, Dan explains the thinking that went into his new business model, and what it means for anyone trying to monetize their newsletter. Dan shares his opinion on Substack—the out-of-the-box newsletter service that seems to be everywhere these days. You’ll find out why Dan started Trapital on Substack, and why he later switched to ConvertKit. You’ll also learn unexpected insights from the world of hip hop, including lessons indie creators can take from Beyoncé’s sales funnel, and why Master P’s cutting-edge albums in the ‘90s show that consistency might just matter more to creators than quality! Links & Resources
Dan Runcie’s Links
Episode Transcript Dan: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:33] Nathan: [00:00:50] Dan: [00:00:51] Nathan: [00:00:53] Why. You know why you care so much about the business side and, what brought you to this point? Dan: [00:01:09] Right. I was very interested in the persona of someone like a show ignite or someone like a Puff Daddy and the people that were both being very deeply involved with what was happening. But. Pulling the strings and making things happen and all of the criticism and successes that both of those people achieved. And I think as I continued to grow up, seeing what that was like at the time, I never truly saw that as a career path for myself, but I was intrigued with it. So it was almost like a hobby and something I pursued and kept up and would always talk about with friends pretty much all through life, but it wasn’t until. Let’s see, six, seven years ago. And this was when I was in business school. We were doing case studies on all different type of topics. And one of them that stuck out, we did this case study on Beyonce. He had just released this surprise albno one had done albums, surprise albums like that at that particular timeframe. And it was this huge marketing case study on how these things happened. And it was a case study that was done by Harvard business school. It spread across to other schools. And that stuck out to me almost like a reminder, like, Oh, Hey, you know, this is something that is huge. And. It stuck out for a few reasons. One, the topic, the subject matter, I’ve been a Beyonce fan since the Destiny’s child days, but second, it stuck out to me just how big of a deal that case study was, how it was from a business perspective. And there weren’t that many articles or breakdowns that were talking about hip hop artists or. Artists in entertainment that we’re doing and making the same type of strategic moves that other industries were making in the type of jobs that I was working in and was playing into working thereafter. So for me, it was really an opportunity to look at that. And that was how I had started doing some freelance writing on the side. Started a blog. It was a personal endeavor just to explore hobbies, my own interest topics that snowballed into publications, reaching out where I started writing for them. But then that snowballed again into writing for more and more reputable spots. And then eventually I saw where media was going. I saw hip-hop’s continued rise and said, you know, I have an interest for this. I clearly have some skills that ability to convey these thoughts. Well, let’s merge these two together and started diff publication focused on the business of hip hop and that CellTrak capital was born. Nathan: [00:04:05] Or that you were fascinated to hear every little detail about. Dan: [00:04:31] I don’t even know how many times. And That stuck out because master P wasn’t just an artist that had this record label behind him, his whole business model. And how he went about just running and being so popular for that stretch in hip hop was so monumental for people across the entire country. He was putting out an album from him and his group every other week. And. They did not go on tour at all. During this stretch, they just monetized their ability to market extremely well, made sure people knew there was a style and a cover of what that No limit album looked like. There was a distinctive sound. And to be honest, even if the music itself wasn’t always the best they mastered the art of branding. So when I think about that fast forwa... | |||
| 28 Dec 2020 | 019: Dan Oshinsky – Turn Your Newsletter Into a Business (Lessons from Buzzfeed) | 00:56:47 | |
Dan Oshinsky was the Director of Newsletters at both Buzzfeed and The New Yorker. Today he runs his own email consultancy called Inbox Collective. Dan has seen newsletters from the early days, and has been instrumental in developing the newsletter strategy for some of the largest publications around. In this fantastic interview, Dan shares takeaways for large newsletters and indie creators alike. He shares how his newsletter led to the Buzzfeed job, and how, once there, he discovered the building blocks that make newsletters resonate with their audience (spoiler: cats ARE involved). Dan also warns us of the danger of obsessing over open rates (or any “silver bullet” metric), and how Job #1 for your newsletter is to earn its place in people’s inboxes. After talking about the importance of carefully defining your newsletter’s audience, Dan answers these burning questions:
Tune in for the answers, and so much more! Links & Resources Dan Oshinsky’s Links
Episode Transcript Dan: [00:00:00] This is why I think I can be useful and how I can be helpful. And if I do a good job, I build that loyalty. I build the audience in the long run. there’s going to be a return on that investment. Nathan: [00:00:24] And then of course he’s run, some of the largest publications around. So it’s a fantastic interview. He has a lot of takeaways that are good for, you know, large newsletters and indie creators alike. So I’m excited to dive in. All right, Dan, thanks for joining me today. Dan: [00:01:00] Nathan: [00:01:01] And now you’ve got a bit more of the indie path as you’re doing the consulting and everything else, but I’d love to just take us back to when you first started to get into running newsletters at Buzzfeed and what, what started that path? Dan: [00:01:36] I’ve been doing it a little while. It was Tools for Reporters is exactly what you think it was. It was a newsletter where we share tools that reporters could use. It’s actually still going. I went to the university of Missouri journalism school and some Mizzou J school grads have picked up that mantle and run with it. And it’s all it just hit earlier this year. Something like 200 additions of this thing has been going for a long, long time. despite my efforts over the years to, to accidentally kill it with, you know, having a job and having other things to do, it turns out when you get hired at Buzzfeed and you have a thousand things to do the like side newsletter, you’re working on becomes a little less of a priority, but it’s my entire newsletter story really starts with this thing Tools for Reporters. I was playing with lots of different types of tools. And it had stuff that I wanted to share figured a newsletter would be a good place to share it. set up a fairly basic, you know, at the time this was MailChimp. I went to MailChimp, set up a newsletter, pretty straightforward to get something off the ground. And in a couple of, you know, first couple of weeks, I got to a place where there were a few hundred subscribers. And for me, the game changer with email was I had, I don’t know how many Twitter followers or Facebook, you know, Followers or friends I had at the time, but I had more of those than I did newsletter subscribers. But if I put something out into the world on Facebook, or I sent out a tweet, nothing would happen, literally nothing would happen. I’d say here’s this exciting new thing I’m working on and nothing would happen. And then I would email a few hundred people and say Hey, here’s this thing I’ve been working on. And I would get Requests from people that, you know we want you to come in and sit down with us and have coffee, job interviews, the Buzzfeed job partially came at a result of at, or out of me working on Tools for Reporters. They. You know, when I started talking with them, I shared with them my newsletter and they’re like, this is really good. We like this. We can do more stuff like this. It was amazing to me how much more impact email had. the conversations I had out of email was really the exciting part because it wasn’t just me broadcasting, whatever news right out into the world but Putting stuff out there and then people writing back and saying I actually have some more stuff I want to talk to you about this, or I want to go deeper on that subject. Or how do you feel about this? I really got to build relationships with my readers and that always struck me as something that was really, really powerful, that set email apart. when I got to Buzzfeed, our, our thinking was twofold. One is we were going to have a chance to build an audience and really have ownership of that audience. of the relationship with them it wasn’t something where. Social media giant could just say one day, you know, We know you have X number of people who follow you on this channel, but, we’ve made some changes to the algorithm and you no longer have access to that audience. You know, we really have the ability to build relationships through email, which was exciting, but the other thing was the potential for conversations, the potential to ask people questions, to get their feedback and to really get to know our readers. That was really, really exciting and something we knew there was huge potential for Nathan: [00:04:57] | |||
| 25 Apr 2022 | 068: Justin Moore - Game-Changing Newsletter Sponsorship Strategies | 01:11:00 | |
In this episode I talk to Justin Moore. Justin is a Sponsorship Coach & the founder of Creator Wizard, a school & community that teaches you how to find & negotiate your dream brand deals. In today’s episode Justin reveals how narrowing in on sponsorship coaching was a huge boost for his business. We talk about him growing multiple audiences between different YouTube channels (he and his wife, April, have well over a million combined followers on YouTube). My favorite part of the episode is when we dive into From Boise, my side project newsletter. Justin breaks down what we’re doing wrong with sponsorships, how we should be selling them, and how there’s quite a bit more to be earned. We also dive into the way he runs his newsletter and how he’s grown it. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Justin Moore’s Links
| |||
| 05 Apr 2021 | 032: Li Jin - Explode Your Reach and Make More Money | 00:55:22 | |
Venture capitalist Li Jin left Andreessen Horowitz to start her own firm, Atelier Ventures. She started Atelier to fund a specific vision of the world: a world in which people are able to do what they love for a living and to have a more fulfilling and purposeful life. In addition to being an investor, Li is a prolific writer and podcaster, producing not only a newsletter but also writing articles for major publications. Find out whether you should really be writing content every week, or whether your effort is better spent on longer-form, epic articles. Should you be publishing in your newsletter, or in publications like Harvard Business Review? Li and Nathan don’t just talk about content, they also get deep into business models for your newsletter business, with Li sharing her perspective as the founder of a venture fund. Don’t miss Li’s unique combination of deep investment knowledge and artistic creativity! Links & Resources
Li Jin’s Links
Episode Transcript Li Jin: [00:00:00] It’s always charging the user for something. Nathan: [00:00:28] We get into whether you should write content, you know, consistently every week, or should you publish it once a quarter and put out these incredible long form posts we get into writing about, or excuse me, writing for publications like Harvard Business Review versus your own newsletter. There’s so much good stuff in here. So I’ll just get out of the way and we’ll dive right in. Li, welcome to the show. Li Jin: [00:01:14] Nathan: [00:01:17] And I imagine saying like me, why don’t you launch a paid newsletter? So could you talk through how you think about, you know, your business and what you meant with that week? Li Jin: [00:01:50] They have a podcast, actually, a network of podcasts, the blog. they have a series of different clubhouse shows now as well. they just do a ton of different media and content creation activities. And so people used to joke like, Oh, this is actually a media company that happens to monetize through venture capital. And I think of myself now as kind of a miniature version of that, where I’m a solo. Content creator. and I monetize through venture capital. Like that is my revenue model. I have a venture capital fund that I raised last year, called . And that is, you know, my day job. That’s where I spend the majority of my time. And then the content that I put out into the world, It’s free. It’s, it’s mostly free for founders to consume. It’s really designed to help them build companies, and to guide them and their strategies. And I don’t monetize the content at all. And the way that I monetize the content is through investing in the best companies that come as a result of the content creation. So, yeah, that was, that was the Genesis behind, the tweet. And so the LV newsletter, I mean, the LPs are like the investors in the fund and that’s how I monetize it. Nathan: [00:03:33] And so I think there’s plenty of examples of people who have, like, the. Have this audience and then an unconventional way of earning a living. Li Jin: [00:04:09] So yeah, a lot of them are sort of blending different business models because newsletters are such a great vehicle to, to build an audience. To get reader attention, to communicate your thoughts into the world and kind of mind-meld with a lot of really interesting folks. And then the best way to monetize that might not be through a straight up subscription or pay. Well, it might be having upside in the businesses that they built. and I think. Content creators are having that rea... | |||
| 10 Jan 2022 | 058: Andrew Gazdecki - How To Supercharge Your Audience Growth | 01:03:17 | |
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of MicroAcquire, the world’s most founder-friendly startup acquisition marketplace. MicroAcquire helps entrepreneurs buy and sell startups. After founding and later selling two successful startups, Andrew decided there needed to be a better way to connect buyers and sellers in the startup marketplace. He founded MicroAcquire to fill this void in the startup acquisition arena. In this episode, Andrew shares how he grew his Twitter audience from 30,000 to 70,000 followers in a few short months. He uses his connections with others, his partnerships, his brand, and savvy marketing techniques to boost engagement and attract followers. It’s a fun and entertaining episode, and I think you’re going to enjoy it. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Andrew Gazdecki’s Links Episode Transcript
| |||
| 31 May 2021 | 038: Steph Smith - Turn Your Newsletter Into a Seven-Figure Business | 00:59:45 | |
Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. In 2019, Steph founded Integral Labs. Integral Labs supports top tech companies with technical writing, content strategy, marketing, and analytics. In 2020, Steph became the Senior Manger of Trends.co. Trends identifies emerging patterns in business months before they become mainstream. In less than a year, Steph grew the number of paying subscribers by more than 400%. In this episode, Nathan and Steph discuss her proven approach to starting and running a profitable newsletter. They cover everything from pricing models to avoiding burnout. Topics from the show include:
Links & Resources
Guest’s Links
Episode Transcript Steph: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:28] Steph. Thanks for joining me. Steph: [00:01:17] Nathan: [00:01:18] Steph: [00:01:34] Nathan: [00:01:37] But you got to find out like how, how she manages to deal on a day-to-day basis. Steph: [00:01:44] And so I’ve just learned over time to not necessarily bucket people, but understand what they’re great at and maybe what they’re not so great at. And Sam loves hiring operators. And he he’s hired CEOs or presidents to work alongside him. So I actually think one of the great things about working with Sam is how self self-aware he is because sometimes visionaries or people who are like the idea guy don’t realize that perhaps they’re not so great at some of the other things. And so I just like to give Sam the space to give his ideas and be the visionary. And it’s funny. Cause sometimes when people first start working with Sam, they’re like, Oh my God, he has so many ideas. Do I have to do all this stuff? And Sam will tell you like, no, don’t do all the things I say. I just love sharing these ideas and getting things out there, but you have to decide what’s important, what should be prioritized. And so I do think it was a little bit of a learning curve, but now I love working with him because he does actually just give you the trust to make those decisions. Nathan: [00:03:03] Steph: [00:03:14] Nathan: [00:03:14] And maybe I shouldn’t be more extreme that way people would know that it’s not humanly possible to do all the ideas and to just ignore most of them. Steph: [00:03:32] Nathan: [00:03:56] And, I’d love to hear more about your process for keeping all that straight, making sure you’ve got nonstop deadlines, crazy ideas. And what do you use for organization? Like maybe somewhat on tools, but even more so like. Steph: [00:04:36] | |||
| 04 Oct 2021 | 050: Dave Pell - Lessons From Two Decades of Publishing Online | 01:02:22 | |
Dave Pell has been writing online for almost as long as the internet has existed. His popular newsletter, NextDraft, has over 140,000 subscribers. NextDraft covers the day’s ten most fascinating news stories, delivered with a fast and pithy wit. Dave has been a syndicated writer on NPR, Gizmodo, Forbes, and Huffington Post. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English from U.C. Berkeley, and his master’s in education from Harvard. Besides being a prolific writer, Dave is also the Managing Partner at Arba, LLC. For more than a decade, Arba has been angel investing in companies like Open Table, GrubHub, Marin Software, Hotel Tonight, Joyus, and Liftopia. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources Dave Pell’s Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Dave: [00:00:23] Nathan: We have this really fun conversation about writing. His writing process. How he grew the newsletter. Bunch of other things that he cares about. Even a few things that I was interested in, like he doesn’t have his face in photos on the internet very much. He has his avatar instead. So, just getting into why that is. He also has a book coming out soon. It’s called Scream Inside Your Heart, which is a fun reference to some memes from 2020. So, enjoy the episode. There’s a lot in there. Dave. Welcome to the show. [00:01:12] Dave: [00:01:14] Nathan: What have you seen change? What are some of those trends that you’ve seen, that you either really miss from the early days, or some of those things that you’ve held onto from the early days of the internet, that you’re really still enjoying? [00:01:46] Dave: The part about the internet that I still feel is there, although a little bit less so because of the big companies have sort of taken over all the platforms and stuff, is just the idea that someone can have a passion or a creative output that they want to share with the world, and they can mold internet tools to fit their skills, and then use the internet to broadcast that out, and still become sort of pretty popular withour the “OK” of some gatekeeper at a publication, or at a television studio, or whatever. The indie spirit of the internet still lives on. It ebbs and flows, and has a lot of different iterations. But that was the thing that excited me the most when I first played with the internet. And that’s the thing that continues to excite me the most now. [00:02:57] Nathan: [00:03:10] Dave: Some of them are professional photographers, some aren’t, and they’re getting their work out there, and then some of them probably get jobs out of it and stuff like that. So, just the idea that you can have some kind of creative output and have a place to share it. And try to get an audience for that is really inspiring. It’s a lot harder than it used to be because there’s a few billion more people trying to get attention also, and because there are more gatekeepers now. So, you have to, hope that your app meets Apple’s guidelines, or that different products you might want to share on the internet have to meet certain classifications now, whereas they might not have in the very early days of the internet. But in general, if you have something to say in one way or another, the internet is a great place for people to figure out a way to receive it. So, that’s pretty powerful, and, still excites me. I still press published with the same enthusiasm now that I did when the internet first launched. [00:04:32] Nathan: [00:04:46] Dave: When I first launched it, I called it Dinner Party Prep. I provided enough information for you to sort of get the gist of the story. And if there’s topics you want to dig deeper, you just click and, you know, go get the story yourself. So that’s sort of the overview of it. [00:05:27] Nathan: [00:05:36] Dave: | |||
| 01 Feb 2021 | 023: Tiago Forte - Building a Second Brain & Lessons From a $1M/yr Newsletter | 01:20:46 | |
Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity. He runs Forte Labs, an education company that helps knowledge workers use technology to become more productive. He earns over $1,000,000 per year by using his 40,000-subscriber newsletter to sell his online masterclass, Build a Second Brain. In this interview, Tiago shares newsletter essentials, including:
Tiago addresses fears about sharing too much in your newsletters, explaining how we live in an age where people want to follow real humans with real problems that aren’t afraid to be vulnerable. Listen in to find out why Tiago, despite having a successful newsletter and online course, is still traditionally publishing a book about building a second brain. Stick around to the end of the show to hear Tiago talk about how he’s using the revenue he earns online to help his family build businesses offline. Links & Resources
Tiago Forte’s Links
Episode Transcript Tiago: [00:00:00] People know what you’re writing about. They know what to expect, they know what problem you’re going to solve. But I really think that’s short-sighted because in the long term they’re going to not have that problem anymore, or they’re going to develop more sophisticated problems or they’re just going to move their attention to some other part of their lives. And if you are this one-dimensional caricature of a person, you pretend you’re this person who thinks about SEO 24/7—which none of us are—they’re going to move on from you. Nathan: [00:00:41] And then actually, if you stick around to the end, we dive into, actually tiny houses and container homes and taking online revenue and bringing it offline, which I think is one of my favorite things. I’ve always seen me talk about that some on Twitter, but I haven’t talked about it a lot on the podcast or anything like that. So I love the idea of doing that, of getting family involved and really using it to teach business lessons to kids. So it’s a longer episode, but I think you’re going to love it. Let’s dive in. Tiago. Welcome to the show. Tiago: [00:01:32] Nathan: [00:01:34] And one thing that that would be a fun place to start, w we’ll get into how to grow the audience and, and monetization and so much other stuff. I just love to hear it starting from zero. What are the first three things that you would do to grow your audience? So, you know, you’re giving advice to someone who’s has nothing going. All they know is I was told I should have an email newsletter and growing at I growing audiences. The thing I want to do this year, Tiago: [00:02:19] If I met them on the subway, can I tell you it was one name and email address at a time? Because I knew there wasn’t much traffic to my website. People weren’t going to sign up just because I was really religious about getting people on there. Nathan: [00:02:50] One two or three subscribers a day coming in you’re at that point, you’re going to wait. This is going to turn into 50 subscribers this month. Something, additional send an additional two to three texts, a day, emails, coffee meetings, any of that, like you could increase your growth rate by 50% by adding an extra couple of people. And so you could cut the time to a hundred subscribers in half just by asking. So I love that point. Tiago: [00:03:38] Which means, you know, maybe from a, like a numbers point of view at the time it takes for you to write down their email address, go home, open up the website, put it in, isn’t worth it. But that person is so much more likely to be someone who reads it, opens it and reads it. Who recommends others who engages with you? Nathan: [00:04:12] And so. He has an incredibly high quality list. I also think about,sJim’s Clara and Ryan holiday, where they are getting replies to their email newsletter. It’s like, Hey man, we come out and talk to my team. What’s your team. You look, and it’s a professional NFL team, you know, and that’s the head coach, you know? And so you’re like, Oh right. Of course so-and-so is on my newsletter.sand so that point that you’re making about quality over quantity, I think is really good. And when you’re getting those first few subscribers from Twitter from wherever else, yes. You have some control of the quality based on the content you’re putt... | |||
| 08 Nov 2021 | 055: Andrew Warner - Turning Your Podcast Into a Successful Business | 01:08:07 | |
Andrew Warner has been part of the internet startup scene since 1997. Andrew and his brother built a $30 million per year online business, which they later sold. After taking an extended vacation and doing some traveling, Andrew started Mixergy. Mixergy helps ambitious upstarts learn from some of the most successful people in business. Andrew and I talk about his new book, Stop Asking Questions. It’s a great read on leading dynamic interviews, and learning anything from anyone. We also talk about longevity and burnout as an entrepreneur. Andrew gives me feedback about my interviewing style, the direction I should take the podcast, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Andrew Warner’s Links Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Andrew: That’s great, but I think we should also be open to what’s going on in the world today. Let’s go talk to that person today. If there’s an artist who’s suddenly done something, we should go ask to do an interview with them. [00:00:32] Nathan: We actually don’t get into that in this episode, but it takes an interesting turn because we just dive right in. Andrew’s got a book on interviewing. He runs Mixergy. He’s been, running Mixergy for a long time. We talk about longevity and burnout, and a bunch of other things. He dives in and challenges me, and gives me feedback on my interviewing style. Where I should take the Podcast, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s more of a casual conversation than the back-and-forth interview of how he grew his business. But I think you’ll like it. It’s a lot of what I’m going for on the show. So anyway, enjoy the episode. Andrew, welcome to the show. [00:01:25] Andrew: [00:01:26] Nathan: This is actually slightly intimidating; I am interviewing someone who has a book coming out about how to be good at interviewing. Where do we even go from here? You were saying that you have thoughts? [00:01:47] Andrew: [00:01:51] Nathan: [00:01:52] Andrew: | |||
| 22 Mar 2021 | 030: Sam Parr - Growing to 2M Subscribers and Selling Your Newsletter | 01:13:01 | |
Sam Parr founded The Hustle, a top-flight newsletter that he grew to almost 2,000,000 subscribers… and just sold to HubSpot! Tune in to hear the whole story of how Sam grew a successful newsletter to seven figures per month in revenue, and the roller coaster ride of selling his small business. Despite his success with a paid newsletter, Sam has lots to share about what people are doing wrong when they launch a Substack. Plus, he gives Nathan ideas and tactics for growing a new, local newsletter that focuses on Boise. In this wide-ranging conversation, you’ll also hear about the art of writing quickly, whether writing your newsletter is something you can (or should) delegate, and whether running a solo newsletter is even the right business for you in the first place. Links & Resources
Sam Parr’s Links
Episode Transcript Sam: [00:00:00] So charge way more. People tend to like that stuff more. If they paid money for it, they usually appreciate it. Nathan: [00:00:25] It’s a long ranging free-form conversation. But we hit another things like, my new local newsletter that I’m starting. He has some growth ideas and tactics that he shares there. We get into what he thinks people are doing wrong when they’re launching Substacks, which is pretty wild since he has crazy revenue. I think, you know, there are over a million dollars a month in sponsor revenue and getting pretty close to that in paid memberships revenue for The Hustle. And we get into growing the newsletter to almost 2 million subscribers. There’s so much good stuff. I’ll warn you. It’s a very rambling conversation, but we have a great time. So I hope you enjoy it. Sam, thanks for joining me. Sam: [00:01:18] Nathan: [00:01:19] Sam: [00:01:30] Nathan: [00:01:32] Sam: [00:01:53] Nathan: [00:01:57] Sam: [00:02:06] Nathan: [00:02:07] Sam: [00:02:09] Nathan: [00:02:11] Sam: [00:02:15] I didn’t know. I mean, I had heard the words, but I didn’t really know like what that implied. And they reached out to me around September or October. They cold emailed me and we had been recruited or, you know, buyers have talked to us for a long time. And like the first couple of times I took them really seriously. And I was like, Oh my God, like, I’m going to dress up nice and fly out to their office. And I’m going to show them all this school stuff. And then after awhile I was like, I just didn’t take it seriously. And I just said, I would send them like, I would like write up like a one pager and I would like tell them all the reasons basically why they shouldn’t bias where, I mean, I was like, look, we’re really good at this. We are horrible at this. the reason why you should buy us as this, the reason why you should not bias as this, if you are, the, the, the expectations for pricing is around this. If you want to talk, call me and like, it was a pretty straightforward thing. And, they liked that. And most people don’t, most people don’t like that. And so they emailed me and then we, we, the deal was announced, like the last day of January and they emailed me in October. Nathan: [00:03:47] Sam: [00:03:49] Nathan: [00:03:51] Sam: [00:03:59] Nathan: [00:04:06] Sam: [00:04:06] And the difference between my small company, it was that I didn’t have a team of like, I don’t ha I had like one woman named ed who works on accounting and finance. And then I had outsourced a lawyer, you know, like an outside law firm. I had an outside tax firm. And then I had me and I had to do a lot of this in private. You can’t really tell employees. And it was very, very hard. They basically, I ha... | |||
| 02 Aug 2021 | 045: Charli Prangley - Running a Successful Newsletter, Podcast, and YouTube Channel | 01:07:15 | |
Charli Prangley is the Creative Director at ConvertKit. Charli has a bachelor's degree in design, with an emphasis on visual communication, from Massey University. Before working at ConvertKit, Charli worked as a designer for companies such as Mitsubishi Electric, Xero, and her own Liner Note Kids. Born in New Zealand, Charli now lives in Valencia, Spain. She is passionate about helping creatives improve their craft and process, as well as working on her own side projects. When she’s not working at ConvertKit, Charli creates weekly content on her YouTube channel and podcast, Design Life, where she shares insights about working as a professional designer, and gives tutorials and advice on design tools and concepts. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources Charli’s Links
Episode Transcript Charli: [00:00:00] It sort of all comes from this. Nathan: [00:00:31] She’s at over 200 or right about 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, which incredible. She’s got all kinds of projects. In this episode, we dive into things about design. She and I are both designers, so we love those topics. We talk about side hustles, and how you balance that with a full-time job. Her career, moving up the ladder, becoming Creative Director at ConvertKit, and all the other things she wants to create. What gives her energy; what doesn’t. We talk about sharing things about money online, and how that can be a tough topic. She shares her income, she does videos about salary and making income from side hustles, so we talk about those details, and then we talk about as a newsletter creator, is YouTube something that you want to pursue? And tips and tricks and ideas for that. Anyway, I’ll get out of the way, and we’ll dive into the episode. Charli, thanks for joining me: Charli: [00:01:42] Nathan: [00:01:47] Is only because we’ve worked together for so long? Charli: [00:01:59] Nathan: [00:02:04] Charli: [00:02:12] Nathan: [00:02:14] All right. Well, maybe let’s start there because we have spent the last four years working together, four-and-a-half. Charli: [00:02:33] Nathan: [00:02:33] As I mentioned in the intro you’ve got, you know, the YouTube channel, you have a podcast, you have a newsletter and everything else. And I, I just love to hear how you think about the intersection of those things. And then we can get into the intersection of a full-time role, and all the full-time creator things. So what’s the, like Charli’s creative landscape? Charli: [00:03:06] And that’s kind of been my approach the whole time through. So when I started, maybe I was making stuff more for beginners, and every now and then I will still, but I’m trying to like level up my audience as well as I level up in my career. And I love the term creator. I feel like it’s definitely the best way to describe me because I’m not just a YouTuber. I’m not just a podcaster, or just a blogger, or a writer, or whatever. I do all the things like wherever I feel drawn to create in whichever method I feel like will best express the thing that I’m trying to teach or share is what I lean into. Nathan: [00:03:49] Charli: [00:03:54] Nathan: [00:03:55] Charli: [00:04:01] Nathan: [00:04:04] Okay. So you have all of these things. Maybe your most recent thing that I want to talk about is Inside Marketing or Inside Marketing Design is that marketing would be an entirely thing. We’re talking Inside Marketing and Design. I’d love to hear first, why you wanted to start that, and maybe the seed, the direction a little bit. I’ve heard you talk about like design being so focused. People either talk like graphic design, or they talk product design, you know. So, we’re like into user experience, user interface. I’m curious how marketing design fits into that and your, your desires there? Charli: | |||
| 08 Feb 2021 | 024: Dan Frommer - Be Interesting, Every Day, Forever - Secrets to Media Success | 01:03:21 | |
Dan Frommer runs a popular newsletter called The New Consumer, which discusses topics on technology and consumer brands. Beginning his career at Forbes, Dan has a long history in the technology field. His extensive experience includes Editor in Chief at Recode, Vox Media’s tech and business news publication, and technology editor at Quartz. He also spent years building up Business Insider as its second employee. In this episode, Dan discusses how email is the most effective way to reach influential people, explaining how he leverages his newsletter, The New Consumer, in a way that will capture the attention of CEOs, board members, and investors. Dan shares newsletter insights, including:
Links and Resources Dan Frommer Links
Episode Transcript: Nathan: [00:00:00] And he’s always had this one-man-band sort of style, which really resonates with me. That’s basically where you learn to, design code, you know, put together plugins, build out your site, as well as writing and publishing and being a journalist and all this other stuff. So he’s done something really impressive and going from the editor in chief of Recode, which is a publication owned by Vox, which is quite large and popular, to running The New Consumer, which he’s had for two years now. It’s more than paying his bills. He’s earning a full-time living from it and he gets to control his own destiny. I love it. We dive into all kinds of interesting topics. We talked about why he has only an annual subscription, rather than going for just monthly, like most people do with paid newsletter, his tech stack, what he thinks about free versus paid subscribers and so much more. Let’s dive in. Dan, Welcome to the show. Dan: [00:05:00] Nathan: [00:05:02] What was the pinnacle? You know, like, as we go through the, the years, like. Was it ending with editor and chief of, of Recode? Like how far ahead did you, did you think? And,sand what did success look like when you were just starting out? Dan: [00:05:31] Journalism like real ethical. proper journalism, but also creating new things on the internet. So new media brands and building websites, building audiences, and I’ve always kind of, I guess, optimize my career for both of those things. so that’s, that’s one way to say, like, I never really sat back and was like, Oh man, I really need to work at the New York times or the wall street journal or something like that. And I really did a lot of,syou know, I trained to be a broadcaster. I was really interested in broadcasting, but,swhen I moved to New York to start my professional career, it was clear that. All the jobs were in what was called digital or interactive journalism. And also that’s where my skills were really helpful. So, you know, thinking, thinking back now, 15 years ago, there was never a point where I was like, Oh man, I really need to get a big title at a big magazine or at the New York times or something like that. I didn’t probably know. Right then, you know, my first job was, was at Forbes, which was kind of, but the, the forbes.com. So it was like the interactive,ssubsidiary of Forbes magazine. So I got to see that kind of big brand. Big media world, but,salso be kind of on a scrappier side of things. And, and from there it just kind of became like, you know what, what’s something interesting that I could work on. that, that took advantage of both my interest in storytelling and journalism, but also,sadvantage of the, of the tools of technology. Nathan: [00:08:07] Do you think that pursuing those skills of video and code and, and maybe some simple design is worthwhile and worth the effort, you know, in addition to figuring out and learning how to be a good writer. Dan: [00:08:36] [00:09:00]sI never had one of those jobs. Those were some of my peers starting off in, you know, small town, local,sbroadcast,steams where you had to do that because there were no resources. I, I love being kind of a one man band on the internet though. Creating my own website, doing my own writing and reporting,syou know, editing my own work, producing it, publishing it, promoting it, all those things. | |||
| 29 Mar 2021 | 031: Mario Gabriele - From Lifelong Obsession to Thriving Business | 00:55:04 | |
Mario Gabriele is the founder of The Generalist. His mission? To bring the most interesting tech writing to your inbox, every week. And he’s not doing it alone, either: Mario works with a team of contributors to deliver new ideas from some of the most original minds in venture capital and tech. In this episode, Mario talks about how and why he left a career in venture investing to build The Generalist, and his lifelong obsessions with writing and technology. The Generalist is not only a really successful newsletter, it’s a thriving business, too! Tune in to hear how Mario did it. You’ll learn about approaching and collaborating with the people you only dream of working with. Mario talks about how he went from merely admiring certain writers’ work to joining their “club” in 18 months! Mario also shares the most reliable way to advance your career, and the safest ways to accelerate it. There’s a lot of good stuff in this conversation! Links & Resources
Mario Gabriele’s Links
Episode Transcript Mario: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:30] So he’s got this interesting mix of his own Content, Community Content, and he’s built it not only into a really successful newsletter, but also a thriving business. So it’s a lot of good stuff. Let’s dive in. Mario. Thanks for coming on the show. Mario: [00:01:25] Nathan: [00:01:26] Mario: [00:01:52] And so for me, that was really two main, explorations. One was that, you know, from a very young age, I’ve always really enjoyed writing. and so I did a lot of that in school. and then after I’d left university, I started to take night school classes and fiction writing at NYU. Starting in 2012, I started to like write a novel every morning, getting up early, you know, spending an hour before work, just sort of like practicing, practicing, practicing. And it was just sort of this hobby I had. And then simultaneously where I was really building a career was in technology. so. You know, on the operating side, at a few companies and then on the investing side in sort of a few venture firms and, starting The Generalist really was just a way to. You know, I express that hobby in a slightly different way. I had folks be like, all right, cool. You’re spending all this time writing. Like what, why don’t you write a thing or two about, about your actual work? and so just started as sort of a side project on the weekends and then bit by bit, it just was absorbing more of my thought. More of my excitement, more of my energy. And it started to really feel like it was pulling me in this direction. And, once I felt like it might be possible for writing to become. My life’s work and be a viable career, which had always been sort of the reason I hadn’t tried to go full-time as a novelist. You know, even though, you know, unless you’re JK rallying, it’s pretty impossible. newsletters felt like a way I could do that and really write the stuff I wanted to write, and make, make a living out of it. Hopefully. Nathan: [00:04:09] Mario: [00:04:16] I’ll do this instead of Medium, like whatever. and then. That first post, even though it was very small circulation just led to so many interesting conversations and people started to sign up. And so it suddenly became like very clear why you should make it a newsletter versus a blog. and then I would say the other sort of critical point was in August of the following year. I went full-time on it. And the growth since, since then has been like significantly different, I would say, just like being able to put more time into it. Nathan: [00:05:15] | |||
| 28 Feb 2022 | 062: Ellen Hyslop - Turn Your Pain Points Into a 400K Subscriber Newsletter | 01:01:44 | |
In this episode, I talk to Ellen Hyslop, Co-Founder of The Gist. The Gist is a newsletter all about sports, written entirely by women. Ellen and her co-founders have scaled a massive team to 20 people. They’ve grown The Gist to almost 400,000 subscribers, and they’re earning fantastic revenue from it. Ellen talks about how they grew The Gist in the early days. She also talks about their process of testing, how they launched with a launch party, and a bunch of other things. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Ellen Hyslop’s Links
| |||
| 09 May 2022 | 070: Katelyn Bourgoin - Stop Selling Courses & Start Selling These | 00:59:13 | |
In this episode I talk to Katelyn Bourgoin. Katelyn is a creator and entrepreneur. She’s built several successful companies and agencies, and built a consultant company that she later sold. We dive into why customers buy, and how to market and sell to them through the Jobs-to-be-Done framework. Katelyn has a wealth of marketing knowledge she shares with us today. We talk about different business models. We get into why you should focus on selling checklists, cheat sheets, and outcomes rather than the traditional video courses. We also talk about how she grew her newsletter to 10,000 subscribers, and got to over 50,000 followers on Twitter. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Katelyn Bourgoin’s Links
| |||
| 28 Jun 2021 | 040: Alex Lieberman - Building a 3M Subscriber Media Empire | 00:59:15 | |
Alex Lieberman is the co-founder and chairman of Morning Brew. Morning Brew is a media company bringing informative and digestible business news to your inbox every morning. They educate nearly 3,000,000 daily readers on the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Alex also hosts The Founder’s Journal Podcast where he gives listeners a “backstage pass” into building Morning Brew, and in turn, helps them build a better business or career. Morning Brew is considered to be the largest email newsletter on the web. Business Insider recently acquired a major stake in Morning Brew at a rumored valuation of over 75 million dollars. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Guest’s Links
Episode Transcript Alex: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:30] We get into why he transitioned from CEO to chairman. We talk about the exit: they sold a majority of the company to Business Insider rumored at over a $75 million valuation, which is really, really impressive. One of the things we talk about the channels that drove growth, their affiliate program, the referral program that so many people talk about and reference, what works, what doesn’t. We get his take on sponsorships versus paid content, details on the type of ads that they used in their paid acquisition when they were growing Morning Brew, so much. Anyway, there’s a lot of good stuff. I’ll get out of the way. Let’s dive in. Alex, thanks for joining me. Alex: [00:01:32] Nathan: [00:01:34] What, what instigated it. What made it time for that move? I know a lot of people who have run companies for years consider a move like that. Alex: [00:01:52] And that’s what I was able to do in, in the early days of the Brew, you know, our original newsletter, our B2B newsletters, our podcasts, like really creating the foundation for something that could obviously become a large media brand. As we’ve scaled, obviously like, you know, you’ve, I’m sure experienced this in your role, the roles of a CEO change 50 different times. And so the way, you know, the way I think about it is the first role that I had at Morning Brew was every role Austin. And I had every role. I always tended to lean more towards sales, marketing, and content, like more the creative and people facing side of the business. Austin always, spend more time on growth product, and like the finance, the finances of the business. And so I wore many different hats and I loved doing those things. And then as we started to grow, as we got the flywheel going of creating great newsletter content, attracting audience and monetizing our audience through advertising. My role shifted. And I went from a hundred percent doing to what I would say is like 50% doing, and 50% managing. And I really enjoyed managing, like I loved, I loved coaching people, supporting people, but what I also learned pretty early on in Morning Brew is that managing there, there were aspects of managing that I loved, and there are many aspects of managing that I didn’t love. The way I think about managing is I think there’s two aspects to managing there’s call it like leadership and there’s operational management, operational management, really being about. Like goal setting, metric checking, and making sure that you’re holding someone accountable to continuing to do the job they’re supposed to do really important job for a manager. Then on the flip side, I would say the leadership side of managing is kind of the empathetic management part, which is how do you support someone in their career growth? How do you talk to someone about the things that are impacting them in their job performance, whether it’s things within their career or things in their personal life that are coming into their career, because that inevitably obviously happens as well. And what I realized is I really loved the second thing. I didn’t necessarily really loved the first thing. The reason I bring that up is because as we’ve scaled as Morning Brew, let’s say got to 50 people and. And at 50 people, we really, that was the point in time when we had to go from bein... | |||
| 11 Oct 2021 | 051: Sean McCabe - Launch a Successful Business by Starting With Writing | 01:08:59 | |
Sean McCabe is the founder and CEO of seanwes media, and Daily Content Machine. Sean is a prolific and successful creator, author, and influencer. His course, Learn Lettering, made $80,000 in the first 24 hours. For nearly a decade his podcast, blog, and courses have helped creators grow their brands, content, and skill sets. Sean’s website is a treasure trove of courses and resources for anyone looking for business knowledge and creative support. Sean’s book, Overlap, shows creators how to turn their passion into a successful business while working a full-time job. His podcast includes almost 500 episodes on content creation and entrepreneurship. His latest venture, Daily Content Machine, turns creators’ best content into clippable moments they can share across their social media accounts. I talk with Sean about what it’s like being a successful creator. We talk about growing your audience and connecting with them. We cover how to learn new skills fast, and about developing a growth mindset. We also talk about managing stress as a founder, how to handle burnout, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Sean McCabe’s Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Sean: There is so much to unpack that you don’t know you need to unpack. [00:00:30] Nathan: I think last time he was on the show, years ago, we were talking about that aspect of his business and how he built this substantial course business. Selling courses on hand-lettering, on marketing, on writing. He’s spoken at our conference Craft + Commerce, all kinds of things. Sean is one of the most prolific creators that I’ve ever known. It’s also super fun that he’s a friend and lives right here in town. We just have a great conversation. We talk about how you create content, which is one of those things that it’s not even how you create content, it’s why. Where that comes from. The internal drive in what you use. Where you choose to have as a source of fuel and energy to put into that creative output. How some sources are really good and productive, and others can be kind of like a house of cards, and it can be harmful. We also talk about scaling teams as a creator. How do you know when to build out a team around your business? He’s done that two different ways. So I get to ask him about some of the things he’s learned and applied differently. I’m going to stop there. There’s a lot of good stuff. So with that, let’s dive in. Sean. Welcome to the show. [00:01:59] Sean: [00:02:03] Nathan: [00:02:08] Sean: [00:02:15] Nathan: [00:02:17] Sean: [00:02:21] Nathan: And I was like, what is up with that? I clicked on it, and it’s this satirical article that has 12 reasons you shouldn’t move to Boise. One of them is the city dump is right in the middle of the city. Another one is like that the Ebola outbreak hasn’t been fully contained yet. So it’s not really safe. I think there was something about lava. Anyway, it’s just an article about all the reasons to not move to Boise. So I think you’re right in line. [00:03:08] Sean: [00:03:11] Nathan: [00:03:19] Sean: [00:03:21] Nathan: [00:03:37] Sean: [00:03:58] Nathan: I wanted to ask what sparked—like maybe first give a summary of Daily Content Machine, since that’s what you’re spending nearly all of your time on. More than a normal amount of time on. So, what sparked it, and what is it? [00:04:19] Sean: [00:04:30] Nathan: [00:04:32] Sean: We produce video clips. We turn long form video shows. If you have a video podcast or other kind of long form video content, we found that the hardest part is finding all the good moments in there, and turning those into short clips. ... | |||
| 28 Mar 2022 | 066: Wes Kao - Creating High-Dollar Online Courses That Sell | 00:59:29 | |
In this episode I talk to Wes Kao, co-founder of altMBA. Her latest startup is called Maven, and it's all about cohort-based courses. Wes is fantastic at course design. Before Maven, she did a bunch of amazing things working with a lot of different creators. We talk about the State Change Method, which is something I use to make my presentations much more interesting. We talk about building an audience on Twitter. We also talk about course design, cohort-based courses, and a lot of other fun things. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources (H5) Wes Kao’s Links (H5)
| |||
| 03 May 2021 | 034: Jason Feifer - How To Balance Creativity With Your Career | 01:05:10 | |
Jason Feifer is the Editor in Chief at Entrepreneur, an American magazine and website that carries news stories about entrepreneurship, small business management, and business. He also hosts a podcast called Build for Tomorrow, and he is the author of a forthcoming book titled Build for Tomorrow, Not for Yesterday. Jason is a unique blend of individual creator and polished corporate employee, so he offers a balanced perspective on work and content creation. In this episode, Jason and Nathan discuss:
Links & Resources
Jason Feifer’s Links
Episode Transcript Jason: [00:00:00] Keep going. Nathan: [00:00:23] One, how he splits his time as an individual creator and, you know, running a very successful, very popular magazine. How he blends those things. He’s got a newsletter, he’s got a podcast, he has several podcasts. He’s working on a book, all of those things. So how he prioritizes his time. All of that. The monthly cadence that he works on, I found really interesting. We also dive into how to package your work. We talk about why he changed the name of his podcast and the research that went into that. Then finally we wrap up by talking about PR and how to get press as a creator, how to think about pitching each individual publication, the work that you need to do to actually get covered a lot of good stuff. So let’s dive in. Jason, welcome to the show. Jason: [00:01:15] Nathan: [00:01:16] Jason: [00:01:51] Right. Which is to say, when am I best at doing various things? And then let’s make sure that I’m doing those things at that time, because if I can write a full, like 2000 word story, in, let’s just say two hours, which sometimes I can do, that’s going to happen in the morning. If I try to do that at 5:00 PM, it’s going to take four to six hours. So why on earth would I waste my time doing tasks when I’m not primed for them? So I clear out the for if I can manage it up to noon, but that’s almost impossible. So really can I safeguard the first hour and a half of my day for writing? And then what I do with that hour and a half depends upon the needs that are most present for me. So for example, sometimes it’s writing a magazine story. Sometimes it’s writing a chapter in my book. Sometimes it’s writing a podcast script and this is dictated by the deadlines that I have. And then the rest of the day, I’m trying to manage everything that needs to be managed. I’m answering a lot of questions. I’m getting on a lot of calls, but I will, Oh, I, if I can. If I can do it, which I can’t always do, but I can do it. Then I will not book anything back to back. I will always block out like a half an hour in between. And that’s because things are coming at me and they’re coming at me for lots of different projects. And it’s hard. You can, you think that you can switch gears really fast between one project and another one company in another, as I’m sometimes doing, because I have my own company and then I’m also working with Entrepreneur and I mean, I, I mean, I’m employed by Entrepreneur. and so I need that time to make those shifts. And the days that I hate the most are the ones, well, first of all, where I lose that time in the beginning, but also where I’m back to back and I never have time to catch up on any of the inbound because that’s when I’m working late into the night. Nathan: [00:04:13] You know, one activity or one business or anything like that. Jason: [00:04:35] Yes, yes. I’m aware, but it is such a deeply researched, highly produced show. It is, it is a months worth of work that goes into every episode. And for reasons that we can discuss I’ve decided that that’s okay because the. Ultimate goal of a podcast. Isn’t always just to have a bazillion listeners of the podcast. Sometimes it can se... | |||
| 04 Apr 2022 | 067: Kaya Yurieff - Finding Your Niche in the Creator Economy | 01:01:54 | |
In this episode I’m joined by Kaya Yurieff. She is the Creator Economy Newsletter writer for The Information. It’s the publication I read when I want to know what’s going on in startups and funding, learn about Spotify’s latest launch, find out what’s going on with Instagram, and things like that. Kaya has a great approach. I love her writing. I love the way she profiles both individual creators and the moves happening from big businesses in the creator space. We talk about her writing process and her system for publishing four days a week. We talk about how they’ve grown the newsletter and what they pay attention to for monetization. We also talk about what it means to be a creator through crises like the pandemic, the social justice issues of the last few years, and now the war in Ukraine. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Kaya Yurieff’s Links
| |||
| 18 Jan 2021 | 022: Lenny Rachitsky - The Dark Side of Paid Newsletters Nobody Talks About | 00:58:55 | |
Lenny Rachitsky sold his company to Airbnb years ago and he spent a bunch of time there as a product manager, working on growth. Now Lenny’s full-time job is his simply-titled “Lenny’s Newsletter”, where he shares everything he’s learned about building products and teams. With over 3,200 paying subscribers, Lenny’s Newsletter brings him a larger income than he had at his tech job! In this fun interview, Lenny shares his journey—how he went from wanting to found another startup to being a one-man newsletter business, and the lessons he’s learned along the way. You’ll learn the “value-add” for a paid newsletter that’s been a great success for Lenny, and how he’s avoiding the trap of workaholism as he builds his business. Lenny also shares how he never runs out of topics, and how he stays interested and curious so he can enjoy running his newsletter for years to come. Plus, as popular as paid newsletters are, they come with some important downsides! Lenny reports from the trenches on what they are and how to deal with them. Links & Resources
Lenny Rachitsky’s Links
Episode Transcript Lenny: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:18] All of these things after leaving Airbnb, he started a newsletter just called Lenny’s Newsletter, and it now has over 3,200 paying subscribers. he’s now earning more from his newsletter than he was at his tech job. Quite a bit more actually. And we get into so many things, but how to keep writing newsletter really fun, how to grow and scale your audience using guest posts to get those first subscribers so much good stuff. Let’s dive in. Lenny. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. So you actually kicked off our call and kind of a fun spot. So I want to start the interview there. And that was, you just said, so did you read the New Yorker article, you know, and, the New Yorker just did another article about newsletters. Why don’t you give us a high level? Cause it kind of takes us into the state of newsletters, you know, on the web right now. Lenny: [00:01:28] And it’s fun to think about it and talk about, and, and tweet about sometimes. But yeah, I don’t have the most thorough opinions of the whole industry, but. What I find is when people do this kind of like overview of what’s happening, it’s always this interesting combination of like, Oh, here’s all the good elements. People can write whatever they want. And they have freedom. They’re running their own business and creating their own kind of life. And then there’s like, Oh, but all these dangers, what are they, what’s going to happen? They need health insurance. And how do we moderate all these folks? And who’s going to win. And how do you, how do you not create this? Just like 1% that does well. And so, so the post is kind of essentially going through a bunch of stories of all those things happening. And I think the conclusion as always, as it’s complicated and there’s good and bad end, we’ll see where it all goes. Nathan: [00:02:32] It’s been fascinating to watch how the landscape has changed over the last, you know, seven or eight years since I’ve been working in this space. But you know, particularly the last say 18 months as Substack has gained a ton of traction. I think a lot of people, this is kinda what I want to talk about next. Who maybe in the past would look at newsletters and go, that’s an interesting business. Like that’s a thing. Maybe that’s your lifestyle business. I don’t know I’m going to go do a startup, you know? that was all the mindset. And now Lenny: [00:03:05] And then I started this newsletter on the side just to like play around with something and magically, it turned around and the newsletter became the main thing that I do. Nathan: [00:03:16] Lenny: [00:03:34] Plan B was maybe do some advising consulting plan C was maybe join a startup plan. D was maybe join a big company. And now are on those lists of plans that I have make a living off writing a newsletter. But what started happening is I first started collecting my thoughts of what I learned at Airbnb and things I’ve done in the past, just so that I don’t have to relearn them. When I start a company is I put out medi posts and that did shockingly well, and then I put out a few more medi posts and those did well. And then somebody suggested I switched to sub stack to, you know, to the classic reasons to have your newsletter it’s own your audience, to not give all the benefits and medi and those kinds of things, which we can talk about. And that just kept going well. And it was always a side project that everyone around me was like, okay, stop this writing thing you’re doing. And you really want to do a startup. You should really focus on that. And just spending so much time writing, what are you doing? But I just kept doing it cause it was interesting and fun and people seem to value it. And I had a good conversation with a friend, maybe six months into it. And his advice was okay, this seems to be working well. People seem to value it. You seem to enjoy it. Maybe just try that for a little while longer. And don’t put all this pressure on yourself to st... | |||
| 13 Dec 2021 | 057: Sherrell Dorsey - Getting Your Newsletter Open Rate Near 50% | 01:02:02 | |
Sherrell Dorsey is the founder and CEO of The Plug, a publication and community for news, insights and analysis on trends in Black innovation. The Plug features stories that show the substantive ways Black people engage with the innovation economy, including analyses of modern technologies. On today’s show, Sherrell shares about building an audience and growing The Plug. We talk about sponsorships, The Plug’s revenue model, and her background in journalism and how she brings that into her current work. We also talk about choosing a niche, staying consistent, and much more. Sherrell has worked in marketing and consulting for companies such as Uber, Tresata, MarketSource, and Build The Good. Sherrell has also worked as a correspondent for Fast Company, Essence, Next City, and Black Enterprise. She earned her master’s degree in data journalism from Columbia University. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Sherrell Dorsey’s Links
Episode Transcript
| |||
| 31 Jul 2023 | 078: Sahil Bloom – Using Flywheels to Build Longevity in the Creator Economy | 00:52:28 | |
In today’s episode, I sit down with investor, entrepreneur, and content creator, Sahil Bloom (in front of a live audience) to unpack the key strategies and lessons that will help you achieve longevity and sustainability in the creator economy.
In today’s conversation, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how Sahil built a thriving ecosystem as a content creator by acquiring businesses that would resonate with his audience and partnering with the right collaborators. You’ll also hear Sahil’s answers to live audience questions where he sheds light on finding the right partner, knowing when to pivot, and the future of the creator ecosystem. In this episode, you'll learn:
Links & Resources: Sahil Bloom Links:
Follow Sahil on LinkedIn Follow Sahil on Twitter Follow Sahil on Instagram Follow Sahil on YouTube Follow Sahil on TikTok Subscribe to Sahil’s newsletter | |||
| 15 May 2023 | 076: PJ Taei – Video Monetization & Handling Competition as a Bootstrapped SaaS Company | 00:56:32 | |
In today’s episode, I’m joined by PJ Taei, Founder and CEO of Uscreen, an all-in-one video monetization platform for content creators that helps them build their brands and grow their businesses. The creator economy has changed a lot since PJ first founded Uscreen in 2015. And in that time PJ has managed to grow Uscreen to $20 million a year in revenue, representing sought-after clients and their channels, like Yoga with Adrienne and Justin Rhodes’s streaming platform, Abundance Plus. Our conversation gets into some pretty fascinating topics, like what to do when major competitors enter your field, the trial and error involved in getting your pricing right, and why true fans are so valuable for content creators looking to monetize. PJ also sheds light on what motivated him to bootstrap his company and expands on why it’s so important to stay in touch with the needs of your customers as you grow! In this episode, you'll learn:
Links & Resources: PJ Taei’s Links: PJ’s website PJ’s email Follow PJ on LinkedIn Follow PJ on Twitter Follow PJ on YouTube Listen to PJ’s Podcast | |||
| 01 Nov 2021 | 054: Nick deWilde - Growing Your Audience While Working Full-Time | 01:01:08 | |
Nick deWilde is a Product Marketing Principal at Guild Education. Guild is a fast-growing startup that partners with Fortune 500 employers. Guild unlocks opportunities for America’s workforce via education and upskilling. Nick also runs his newsletter, The Jungle Gym. The Jungle Gym helps readers build a more fulfilling career that integrates work and life. Before working at Guild, Nick earned his MBA from Stanford Business School, and was a Managing Partner at Tradecraft. Nick and I talk about his relationship with Twitter, and how social media can both serve you, and be a challenge. We talk about individual brands and growing a platform. Nick also shares his thoughts about marketing yourself as an individual, and we discuss how growing an audience plays into your career. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Nick deWilde’s Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Nick: [00:00:25] Nathan: We talk about growing as newsletter. We talk about his interesting relationship with Twitter and social media. How it can really serve you and be this great thing, and then it can also be challenging. Maybe you’re spending too much time on it, or time on it in a way that’s not actually serving you or benefiting you. We talk about the rise of individual brands being used to grow a platform. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about, watching Morning Brew and Fastly, and some of these other companies do it. It’s just interesting whether you’re marketing as a company or an individual. It’s just a good conversation. We also talk about audience, and just how that plays into your career. He recently made the switch from a full-time role, to doing more audience-based business stuff. He was just in the middle of that journey. So, it’s a fun place and time to catch up in the conversation. Nick, welcome to the show. [00:01:33] Nick: [00:01:35] Nathan: So, you know, I could probably pull off a good, to [00:01:50] Nick: [00:01:51] Nathan: [00:02:11] Nick: As we’ve been in lockdown, lives have moved online. I have met and made friends with so many amazing people through Twitter that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. Same with the newsletter, but Twitter is a little bit easier to build those relationships. | |||
| 19 Jul 2021 | 043: Ryan Sneddon - Lessons On Writing Local Newsletters | 00:58:36 | |
Ryan Sneddon is a self-described CEO and emperor of local news. Ryan is building a hyperlocal newsletter empire one city at a time, starting with Annapolis, MD. Ryan’s newsletter, Naptown Scoop, is an email to the residents of Annapolis containing all pertinent news and events. It's an awesome community of residents and business owners coming together to be good neighbors. Ryan has worked as an editor at The Daily Thread, as a business solutions consultant at Softdocs, and as an engineer for Grand Banks Yachts. Ryan has also worked as a project engineer at The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company. Ryan studied mechanical engineering at the University of South Carolina, and also worked as a cinematographer and photographer. Ryan has done volunteer work building relationships with high school students while leading a team of other volunteers at Young Life. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources Ryan Sneddon’s Links
Episode Transcript Ryan: [00:00:00] The great thing about an email newsletter is that people can answer it: I can reply to an email cause it’s just a regular email. Answer every single one of those, because that’s how you build up a loyalty. Nathan: [00:00:30] He was giving me some advice and I was like, you know, I why don’t you just come on the podcast and share the story, share what you’re doing. It’s pretty fun how it’s coming together. He’s working super, super hard on it, and we dive into all the details. So with that, I’ll get out of the way. Ryan, thanks for joining me. Ryan: [00:01:09] Nathan: [00:01:10] Ryan: [00:01:18] Nathan: [00:01:40] Ryan: [00:01:43] And I was like, well, that was cool. I can’t be the only one that liked that. So I was like, I’ll just build it here. And, I wasn’t the only one that liked it. We were talking before we started recording. There’s not really a good original ideas in my head. So the fact that I wanted it was a good sign, because if I wanted it other people probably do, too. Nathan: [00:02:17] Ryan: [00:02:27] Nathan: [00:02:31] Ryan: [00:02:59] Like sometimes—no joke—sometimes more than that. But last Thursday night I was delivering cookies to people who bought shirts, because I made some shirts to sell for the brand. And I said I was going to deliver cookies to the first or 10 out of the first hundred orders, which was like super ambitious of me. I didn’t even think about the fact that like, I would have to sell a hundred shirts for that to happen. and I only sold 10 shirts. So I delivered the 10 cookies to the first 10 people instead of 10 out of the first hundred. But I’m delivering cookies to this one, and I just emailed everybody and said, if you’re not home, can I leave it in the mailbox? And they were like, yeah, our mailbox is a giant stone pillar at the front of the driveway. And I was like, giant stone pillar? Like, this is probably a pretty nice house. And so I put in the GPS and I’m like, oh yeah, this is a waterfront looking pretty good. I roll up to the house and it’s gorgeous. It’s probably like this three to $4 million house. I can look at it and kind of think I know who the architect is, because she’s pretty famous around the area. And as I’m putting these cookies in the giant mailbox, they roll up and they like the car honks, and they roll down the window. It was an Uber, they rolled out of the back windows and they’re like, “You must be Ryan!” And I was like, “Yeah!” And they were like, “Do you have time to come in for a drink?” And I’m like, “Yeah, why not?” it’s 9:45 at night. No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a Thursday. I think it was a Wednesday because if it was Thursday, I would have had to go home and write the email for Friday. But since it was Wednesday, I didn’t have to get one out to the next day. So I was like, “Yeah, I have time for a drink!” And I ended up sitting on their back porch for two hours, drinking wine, just talking about their life, my life, the business, the guy, it was just the ... | |||
| 10 May 2021 | 035: Dickie Bush - How To Make $100,000 Writing on Twitter | 00:54:52 | |
Dickie Bush is a full time Portfolio Manager based in New York City. He is a graduate of Princeton, where he received a degree in Financial Engineering and played on the football team. Dickie writes a weekly newsletter called Dickie’s Digest where he shares thoughts and links on growth of all kinds, including personal, intellectual, physical, network, economic, and other forms of growth. Dickie is probably best known as the founder of Ship 30 for 30, an online cohort based course where he teaches writers how to write better, grow their audience, and show up consistently. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Dickie Bush’s Links
Episode Transcript Dickie: [00:00:00] The Twitter algorithm. When people respond to something, it shows up in more feeds. Nathan: [00:00:27] We deep dive more than any other episode on the Twitter algorithm, what works, what doesn’t, some of it is pure speculation. Some of it are things that have been pretty verifiable. There’s a lot of good stuff. I think you’re going to enjoy it. I particularly love how Dickie has put together these flywheels that he’s refining each time he does a new cohort of the course. There’s a ton of momentum here. He’s just absolutely going to blow up. And it’s really, really impressive. So with that, let’s dive in. Dickie, welcome to the show. Dickie: [00:01:15] Nathan: [00:01:17] And that’s that everything we see online is just a side hustle for you. Can you talk about, at a high level, what you do day to day, and then, how you balance that with your wildly successful side hustle. Dickie: [00:01:58] And explore just little interests to me. And that has evolved relatively quickly, over the last, you know, nine months. Nathan: [00:02:38] Dickie: [00:02:54] And so I started kind of exploring, how can I start to have a forcing function to learn more about the things I’m doing? So I just started writing a weekly newsletter. I had seen people do it and you just curation and et cetera. So that was kind of my foray into it. And I did that for about 35, 40 weeks, and started writing on a blog, exploring dabbling in some things that I was interested in, but in July, I’d probably published 30 or 40 newsletters in a row, a couple of blog posts, but just felt like I was kind of stuck and had so many ideas that I wanted to explore, but didn’t have the medium to do it. When my feedback loop was slow, I was on the weekly cadence, but it was inconsistent, et cetera. And so coming into August, I started just tweeting more and getting through these ideas. And I’m sure we’ll talk more about Twitter. It’s kind of an idea refinery, right? You can just get these ideas clear the junk that’s in your head to find out what you really want to talk about. And so that was, you know, that was kind of the inflection point was when I made a new Twitter account in August and said, “I’m going to start to share these ideas that I think I want to talk about.”" Nathan: [00:04:27] Dickie: [00:04:34] If you went on my account and said, who are this person similar to? It was all inactive accounts from high school. And so I just wanted a fresh slate too, kind of start over. And so I made the new account and said, Hey, I’m maki... | |||
| 01 Mar 2021 | 027: Nathan Baschez - Find Your Best Ideas With a Newsletter Mastermind | 01:06:06 | |
Today’s interview is with Nathan Baschez. There aren’t too many people more familiar with the creator economy than Nathan. He started his own company with Hardbound and was the first employee and VP of Product at Substack in the early days. Now Nathan runs a company called Every, which is a bundle of premium newsletters. In this episode we dive into how Nathan creates tons of high-quality content every week, and how to facilitate your ideas with a newsletter “mastermind” group. We also get into a great discussion about pricing and churn for premium newsletters, and what it means for creators to have Twitter, Facebook, and other big media companies getting into the newsletter game. Links & Resources
Nathan Baschez’s Links Episode Transcript N Baschez: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:29] And he was at Gimlet Media for awhile. And now he’s running a company called Every, which is a bundle of premium newsletters. They’re really focused on incredibly high quality content. And this episode we dive into how to write great content, facilitating your ideas with sort of a mastermind group. There’s a fun discussion around that. We talked about Twitter and Facebook and others getting into the newsletter game and what that means. Otherwise monetize your newsletter pricing churn. There’s actually, it’s a great discussion on insurance. You’re gonna want to stay tuned for that. Anyway. There’s a lot of good stuff, So let’s dive in and I’d love for you to meet Nathan. Nathan. Welcome to the show. N Baschez: [00:01:20] Nathan: [00:01:22] N Baschez: [00:01:27] Nathan: [00:01:31] N Baschez: [00:01:50] We also have some podcasts that we do that are kind of, they’re very related to the newsletters, but basically it’s just this cluster of people that work together to create cool stuff. But there’s kind of, a lot of, we don’t really publish anything under the Every name. We publish it all under one of our individual publications. And each of those are incredibly kind of like specific is the goal. and, the interesting thing about our bundle is we’re structured as this. Thing that we’re calling a writer collective where it’s somewhere between getting a job at the New York times and running your own paid newsletter, like, you know, on, on your own sort of like whatever convert kit or sub stack or whatever other platform. And it, it gives you some of the upsides of, you know, having an editor, having some financing, having some distribution, all that kind of stuff, that you’d get by working at a traditional media company. But. Unlike working at a traditional media company, you’re building your own creative vision. Like you’ve got the final say on edits and stuff. And you know, you have the most important thing is obviously the shared upside. So you get like a huge chunk of the profits. We typically split them 50–50, but it’s a little bit case by case, depending on like what kind of team we’re assembling around a specific newsletter. And sometimes there’s more than one, you know what more than one person working on one. But roughly it’s like a 50–50 split. And, we’re also trying to kind of come up with creative ways to split the IP. But anyway, long-winded way of saying it’s like this interesting kind of new experiment, at least interesting to me, a new experiment in how to structure a media company. Nathan: [00:03:31] And, and, you know, some of the more mechanics of that. N Baschez: [00:03:55] And two of them are going to be for people who are paying or whatever. Like ma maybe it’ll make sense to work with us. I think that it really depends on kind of like, your goals, but we’re more focused on things where like, maybe we’re really helping you like really deeply edit thing. Cause there’s like a thing you’re trying to do that, that you really value this sort of like editorial feedback. And you’re kind of figuring out what you’re writing about as you’re going. or, maybe you already have a newsletter and you want to create a new sort of like. Version of it. That’s like, maybe it’s... | |||
| 26 Jul 2021 | 044: Robert Glazer - Run Your Newsletter Like a Boss: Tips From a Top-Level Corporate CEO | 00:59:57 | |
Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a global marketing agency. Robert is also the co-founder and Chairman of BrandCycle, an affiliate marketing and content monetization platform. Acceleration’s accolades under Robert’s direction include Glassdoor’s Employees’ Choice Awards, Entrepreneur’s Top Company Culture, Inc. Magazine’s Best Place to Work, and Fortune’s Best Small & Medium Workplaces. Robert is also the international bestselling author of four books: Elevate, Friday Forward, Performance Partnerships, and How To Thrive In The Virtual Workplace. With a passion for helping entrepreneurs and organizations achieve success, Robert shares his insights in Friday Forward, an inspirational weekly newsletter reaching over 200,000 individuals and business leaders across 60+ countries. He is also a regular columnist for Forbes, Inc. and Entrepreneur on the subjects of performance marketing and entrepreneurship, company culture, hiring, and leadership. Robert enjoys speaking on business growth, culture, mindful transitions, building capacity and performance, and spends his spare time skiing, cycling, reading, traveling, renovating his home, and spending time with his family. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Robert Glazer’s Links
Episode Transcript Robert: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:31] But then he also did it while running a full-time business while running a team of over 200 people. They’re growing really quickly. The company is called the Acceleration Partners, and they are an agency that works with all the biggest affiliate programs out there. So it’s fascinating the way that he took the content, the way that he republished on LinkedIn and wrote for Forbes, and, Inc., and others. We also get into other things like company culture. He runs a virtual team. We get into why he writes books and produces courses even as he’s running a multi-million dollar company. A lot of interesting things. There are questions that I’m asking kind of really for myself, because he has this interesting split of content creator and CEO, that I try to find that balance and walk that line as well. It’s a phone conversation. We've been friends for a long time and, haven’t caught up in quite a while. So, it’s just fun to chat. I hope you enjoy the episode. Bob. Welcome to the show. Robert: [00:01:34] Nathan: [00:01:36] Robert: [00:01:41] Nathan: [00:01:43] Because as I understand it, you didn’t set out to start a newsletter. You set out to create content for your team. Robert: [00:02:12] The real focus is on the morning routine, not the real focus, a big focus was on a morning routine, starting off the days. Because, you know, time for thoughtful reflection, reading something positive writing, which is a great routine for a creator anyway. And, we were given some stuff to read. It was a little too like rainbow and unicorny like, “You can do it!” quotes. Like it wasn’t my cup of tea. And so I, when I got back and I continued through the routine, I was like, you know what, maybe, maybe I’ll combine these activities. I have some stories that I like and some quotes and some things in this folder. Like, so I thought like our team was like 40 at the time, I think maybe 45 and we’re all distributed. We’ve always been virtual. And so I was like, I’ll just start writing this note to the team on Fridays. And it won’t be about our business or anything. It’ll be about a story or something kind of inspirational and motivational getting better. Started sending these things, I changed the name a few times. For a couple of months I didn’t think anyone was reading them. Then I did get some notes back saying, you know what, I did this thing, you talked about three or four weeks ago, or, “Thanks, that was really helpful.” And the other curious thing was I got notes like, “Hey, I shared this with my wife’s company,” or, you know, “My brother shared this with his family. He loves it. I’ve been sending it to him.” So, I was actually at another EO conference a couple months later talking with some other CEOs about like, this is, this has been really good. It’s been good for me. It makes me think about something, right. It’s been a great way to connect to the team. You know, you, you should all try this. And they said, Oh yeah, well, se... | |||
| 01 May 2023 | 074: Alyssa Dulin – Secrets of Email Deliverability | 01:00:58 | |
Today, I sit down with the Head of Deliverability at ConvertKit, Alyssa Dulin, to shed some light on the often mysterious game of getting your email into the right inbox. Alyssa's expertise about what creators need to focus on and the most recent developments in the email marketing space can truly take your company's reach to the next level! Deliverability has always been a huge part of what we offer at ConvertKit, and Alyssa unpacks the most important pieces of this puzzle, covering sender reputation, effective cadences, and setting and delivering on expectations. As with so much of our philosophy, it is all about playing the long game over short-term wins and shiny statistics. You’ll get a look behind the scenes at how the world of email actually operates and evolves, the important conversations that happen between providers, as well as some helpful practical tips and common mistakes to avoid. Be sure to join Alyssa and me for this illuminating chat. In this episode, you'll learn:
Links & Resources: Alyssa Dulin Links: Follow Alyssa on Twitter Listen to Alyssa's podcast Subscribe to Alyssa's newsletter | |||
| 16 Aug 2021 | 047: Matt Ragland - How to Go Full-Time as a Content Creator | 01:11:59 | |
Matt Ragland is a productivity expert and full-time content creator. He has worked for companies such as AppSumo.com, ConvertKit, and Podia. Matt graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in recreation & tourism management. Matt was one of the earliest members of the team at ConvertKit, where he was employee number five. Since leaving ConvertKit to start his own company, he now hosts a podcast, publishes a newsletter, has created several courses, and hosts his own YouTube channel. Matt prides himself on being a skilled manager and enjoys helping his clients and audience grow and develop their agencies. He is also the proud father of two boys and is a fitness enthusiast. Matt and his family live in Nashville, Tennessee. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Matt Ragland’s Links
Episode Transcript Matt: [00:00:00] And you’re also going to build your own country. Nathan: [00:00:30] We have a really fun conversation reminiscing about the early days talking about crazy rocket ship growth, and how we kept up. We get into earning a living as a creator. How he grew his YouTube channel to 60,000 subscribers. How to choose a niche, and when you should double down on that, and what’s getting traction on YouTube. The last thing that we talk about is when, as a creator, you should quit your full-time job, and some of the nuances of that, so you can go full-time on your creative endeavor. So it’s a longer episode today because Matt and I just can’t help but tell stories. With that, let me get out of the way and dive in. Matt, thanks for joining me. Matt: [00:01:31] Nathan: [00:01:34] Matt: [00:01:40] Nathan: [00:01:41] Matt: [00:01:44] Nathan: [00:01:49] I think Brian Delk was a mutual friend. Is that right? Matt: [00:02:06] Nathan: [00:02:32] Matt: [00:02:33] Nathan: [00:02:36] Matt: [00:02:38] Nathan: [00:02:41] Matt: [00:02:43] I was doing some contract work with some other SaaS companies. In terms of an audience building creator standpoint, I was doing two things. One was that I was creating the sketch notes. And so like visual, visual art of like webinars, podcasts. And that’s what I would use to teach people how to take better notes so they could remember more of what they’re doing. And it was a way to connect with other influencers because it was an attention grabbing thing. And so that was the main thing in terms of audience building and some course creation. The other thing that I was doing that paid the bills a little bit better at that time was I was also helping people set up WordPress themes and websites. At the time I would be like, oh yeah, you know, I kind of do some web development and then like, not really knowing like what all that meant. And then as I started to work more and more with actual developers, I would set up a theme online for people. But you also look at it and see that there’s still a pretty interesting intersection between like, how can you just do something relatively simple for people that either: A, they don’t have time to do, or B, they just don’t want to figure out because they just want to focus on their creative work. And so that’s what I was doing summer 2015 at the time. Nathan: [00:04:27] Matt: [00:04:37] Nathan: [00:04:39] Four. Yeah. and we were at 15,000 a month in revenue. Let’s see now I’m trying to think. ... | |||
| 11 Jan 2021 | 021: Byrne Hobart - Build Recurring Revenue With Your Newsletter | 01:07:36 | |
Byrne Hobart is a chartered financial analyst who loves writing about the intersection between finance and technology. He writes The Diff, one of Silicon Valley’s most popular newsletters. In this episode, we dive into how Byrne launched his newsletter, how much he’s earning, and how he publishes five times a week! You’ll learn why Byrne isn’t worried about pirates getting their hands on paid newsletters, and why you should worry about selling hard enough, instead. Byrne talks about how to build recurring revenue, and writing for different types of readers. He also points out an important factor that affects the churn rate of your newsletter! Byrne shares further insights on using free social media to lead people to the channels you monetize, and why he competes for readers’ highest-value time, instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Links & Resources
Byrne Hobart’s Links
Episode Transcript Byrne: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:25] Like I first heard about him from Patrick Collison at Stripe. So this is the kind of thing that a lot of really important, really interesting people are paying attention to. So in this episode, we’re going to dive into how he launched his paid newsletter, how much he earns. He publishes five days a week. These are long form detailed con detailed articles that Bern is posting basically five days a week, which is, is a crazy consistency. So his writing process, what inspires them and so much more what’s that then. Byrne Welcome to the show. Byrne: [00:01:23] Nathan: [00:01:25] Byrne: [00:01:35] Nathan: [00:03:42] And then the closer they are to actually creating a monopoly, in and succeeding the less they’re like, Oh no, no, no. It’s not a monopoly at all. No. W like, look at all this competition. We have, everybody has a competitor. Byrne: [00:04:14] And our customers could go to all sorts of different media, but really Google has a, basically a monopoly on search and search is an incredibly lucrative business, but yeah, they, they can’t quite talk about that. And there are, there are other companies that have these little monopolies, like sometimes, If you, if you look at the, some of the large us companies that had large research labs in the thirties, forties, fifties, in some cases it seems like part of the point of those labs was to give them somewhere. Somewhere, they could dp their excess profits so that they just didn’t look that profitable. So if you’re at and T you... | |||
| 07 Jun 2021 | 039: Eric Jorgenson - How to Increase Profits Exponentially by Using Leverage | 00:56:17 | |
Eric Jorgenson is a writer, course creator, blogger, and podcaster. He is also on the founding team of Zaarly, an online marketplace for hiring home service providers. Eric has been publishing online since 2014, and operates a monthly newsletter. His business blog, Evergreen, has educated and entertained over a million readers. Eric is the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor. Naval's principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness have captivated the world. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years. It's a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. Eric’s current project, Building a Mountain of Levers, teaches “how to accomplish superhuman feats by playing a different game — building leverage.” In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Eric Jorgenson’s Links
Episode Transcript Eric: [00:00:00] I think counseling and learning keeps us humble and keeps life exciting. Teaching is rewarding. The fact that we can all kind of be a part of it is really fun. Nathan: [00:00:29] And I know we talked about that at the end of the episode, but throughout the episode, we talk about online education, leverage—we spend a lot of time talking about leverage—which is sort of this thing that Naval has really made the centerpiece to a lot of his content that he’s produced. Eric has gone even further and produced a course on and talked about so much great stuff. Really important concepts that I think you’re really gonna enjoy. So I’ll get out of the way and we’ll just dive in. Eric, thanks for joining me. Eric: [00:01:18] Nathan: [00:01:30] Eric: [00:01:33] Nathan: [00:01:41] Reading through all of your stuff online, you are obsessed with education, specifically online education. You’ve got Course Correctly where you’re like reviewing online courses with a friend of yours. You’ve got like there’s a lot going on and you truly care a lot about the details of online education, and I’m curious, like why, where does that come from? Where does the interest turn into obsession? Eric: [00:02:12] But if we just kind of look at the species over like a few hundred years or a few thousand years, like our ability to educate ourselves. And then the next generation is like a huge, huge, heavily weighted variable. I guess into like the outcome that we achieve over a long period of time and like how we can affect that. And I think like there’s no, you know, the, the first principles kind of like where’s the laws of physics limitedness is like, we have the ability to be so much better at education than we are, and we are. There’s some specific context where we’re incredible educators. Like our doctors are incredibly well-educated; the rigor of like a pilot’s education or doctor’s education compared to, you know, somebody who maybe like a writer, like different creative pursuits or do an MBA, like is just, we’re just missing easy opportunities to kind to become significantly better. And the internet lowers the cost of that and increases the accessibility of it. And so I think we’re going to see like a really kind of cool transformation of that over our lifetimes. I was excited to kind of see it, see it come together. Nathan: [00:03:40] Eric: [00:04:09] And there’s always somebody who’s like one s... | |||
| 05 Jul 2021 | 041: Jack Butcher - Build Once, Sell Twice: Earn $1M a Year Selling Digital Products | 01:06:13 | |
Jack Butcher is the founder of Visualize Value, a design, consulting, and educational company in New York City. Jack spent 10 years working in advertising for Fortune 100 companies as a creative director for multi-billion dollar brands that include Amazon, Nokia, McDonald’s, and Mercedes-Benz. It was a job he found enjoyable but constraining. In search of freedom, Jack started his own advertising agency, which he describes as “No fun, and even less freedom.” However, after two years of iteration, Jack figured out how to transition to highly specialized (and fun) consulting, and a product business that scales infinitely. Visualize Value is the product of that transition, a project Jack has used to build a network of mentors, a $1M/year product business, and a media platform with an audience of over 500,000 people. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Jack Butcher’s Links
Jack: [00:00:00] And then just becomes a game of how effective are you at spreading that story and reaching people that need the thing that you’ve done. Nathan: [00:00:37] Black background, white text, white line drawings, slightly pixelated looking. It’s very distinct style and he’s used it to build a massive following; well-over a hundred thousand followers in social media, he built his email list, he’s doing fantastic revenue from courses. So, we dive in on what it takes to be unique. How a lot of marketing Twitter, you know, marketers talking about marketing is repetitive. A lot of people don’t have a unique angle on it. And so how he makes unique content that’s more interesting and engaging and stands out. How constraints really drive that. We talk about a lot of other things, exactly how he makes money and monetization. There’s a lot of great stuff, who inspires him, so much more. Jack’s someone that I’ve wanted to have on this show since I started it. And so I’m very excited to talk to Jack. Let’s dive in. Jack, thanks for talking with me today. Jack: [00:01:49] Thank you for having me, man. I appreciate it. Nathan: [00:01:51] You’re doing something different instead of just like another random tweet thread, or like summarizing the same quotes that everyone else is doing. It feels like you’re doing something unique. And in, you know, in these little graphics, you’re explaining these same concepts that everyone else has talked about, but in a really condensed format. So, I’m curious, well, one, let’s just start with where that came from, and then I want to get into like what you think other people should do to differentiate and not be the same. Like, you know, it’s just copying everybody else. Jack: [00:02:52] Multinational billion dollar brand campaigns. And one of the skills, one of the skills I built up, I think, across all of those experiences was working on pitch decks. So what all of these different ad agencies have in common is you have to tell compelling stories to get the opportunity to work on a project. But the pitch deck is kind of a work in the agency, right? Nobody wants to be the last one in work on the pitch deck, waiting for everybody’s emails to say include this, include this. So, early in my career I sort of got stuck with that by default, but for whatever reason, not quite into it quite, enjoyed the process of distilling all of these different people’s ideas that would come at you from all different parts of an agency or trying to convey something to a business. Basically tell their story back to them in a more compelling way than they’ve ever heard it told. And that’s essentially what gets you the opportunity to work on these projects? So, yeah, a lot of late nights working on pitch decks was the, I think the eventual catalyst for visualized value as a style, I went through a ton of iterations to get there. Worked at agencies for eight years, started my own agency and then slowly narrowed down the type of work I was doing as an agency to that really, , specific aesthetic and that very specific deliverable. So before visualize value was a media company, it was a very hig... | |||
| 02 May 2022 | 069: Laura Roeder - Building the Best Brand in Your Niche | 01:04:02 | |
In this episode I talk to Laura Roeder. Laura and I have been friends for a long time. I’ve learned so much from her, and it’s great to have her on the podcast. Laura started an online community and a course called Creating Fame. She’s done a bunch of stuff in the internet space. She’s one of the people who’s been doing it since the early days. She got into software with a company called MeetEdgar, which is a social media scheduling service, and grew it into a successful company before selling it. She recently started another company called Paperbell. Paperbell is the all-in-one software that solves all the problems of running a coaching and consulting business. There’s so much to learn from Laura. I love her direct, blunt style. She’s given me great advice over the years, and you get to tune in as we jump on a call, hit record, and start catching up. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources Laura Roeder’s Links | |||
| 06 May 2019 | 016: Inside Ahrefs: one of the most efficient SaaS companies in the world | 00:58:06 | |
In this episode I sit down with Tim Soulo, the CMO at Ahrefs. He shares behind-the-scenes on how they've built a company to over $1M in revenue per team member.
| |||
| 21 Feb 2022 | 061: Rachel Rodgers - Simple & Consistent: How To Build an 8-Figure Business | 01:03:54 | |
In this episode I talk to Rachel Rodgers. Rachel is an attorney turned business coach. She’s someone I’ve admired and respected for a long time. She helps small business owners understand contracts and the legal side of running a business, and helps them scale their business. Rachel is a lot of fun, and she’s brilliant at business. She’s my hero because of the way that she approaches scaling a massive and successful business, and how she thinks about brand and everything else. On today’s show we talk about why business partnerships are a bad idea. Rachel shares her keys to building a successful membership community, and the benefits of publishing a book. We also talk about why you should take expensive vacations, how to build a great team, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources (H5)
Rachel Rodgers’ Links (H5) | |||
| 14 Feb 2022 | 060: Reid DeRamus - Marketing Tips From HBO Max’s Former VP of Growth | 01:11:52 | |
In this episode I talk to Reid DeRamus. He comes from the video streaming world of Hulu, HBO Max, and Crunchy Roll. His background in data analysis helped these companies grow their streaming services. Now he’s taking what he learned into the creator space to help people with their paid newsletters and courses, bringing these growth habits and growth techniques into their solo or small team creator businesses. We spend this episode riffing on business models, and the analytics that you should pay attention to as an individual creator. We also discuss branding, positioning, and local meetups. It’s a fun episode that I think you'll enjoy. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Reid DeRamus’s Links | |||
| 12 Jul 2021 | 042: Cherie Hu - The Math Behind Water & Music, and a Successful Newsletter | 01:01:21 | |
Cherie Hu is an accomplished musician, an award-winning writer, a columnist, entrepreneur, and self-described “professional overthinker.” Cherie specializes in analyzing, tracking and critiquing innovation in the global music business. Cherie earned her bachelor’s degree in statistics from Harvard, studied piano and music theory at The Juilliard School, and has taught as an Adjunct Professor at New York University. Cherie has worked for Forbes, Billboard, and Music Business Worldwide. Cherie is also the founder of Water & Music. Water & Music is an independent newsletter, research hub and community forum that is “dedicated to unpacking the fine print of commercial, technological and cultural change in the industry.” The Water & Music newsletter reaches over 10,000 free subscribers and 1,000 paying members. Subscribers represent numerous industries: music, film, fashion, advertising, gaming, investment banking, venture capital and more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Cherie’s Links
Episode Transcript Cherie: [00:00:00] Nathan: [00:00:30] There’s a little less hard hitting tactics of, “Do this next to the newsletter,” and a lot more on: this is what’s going on in the industry and what you should pay attention to. Those are some of my favorite episodes, and this one is pretty great. So let’s dive in. Cherie. Thanks for joining me. Cherie: [00:01:25] Nathan: [00:01:27] Cherie: [00:01:41] And that, that was my path for a while, to just go to conservatory for piano and study that, and be a full-time performing pianist ideally. Very, very different from what I do now, but, still very near and dear to me. A lot of my closest friends, I kind of made in that environment, very intense, but fun environment. So, I guess my first and most intense involvement growing up with music was definitely on the performing and on the creative. At the same time academically, I was really into math and I was on the math team, did math competitions in school. I ended up majoring in stats in college, taking a lot of math and stats classes, but at the same time, a lot of music classes, and from a very early stag, trying to think about where those two worlds intersected. So, because I was more like a performer initially, I was thinking, applying math to music theory. I think that’s still a really interesting like application area. I guess also in spite of learning, studying piano for 10 to 15 years, I wasn’t even aware of the scope of what the music industry involved in terms of the jobs that were possible, the new kinds of jobs that were emerging, until I would say 2013, 2014. That’s when I had the opportunity just to explore, this career path, to do a two week, two to three weeks shadowing experience at Interscope. It was with their A&R team. In terms of like actual like tasks, I didn’t do that much because it was a short amount of time, but just that experience opened my mind, even to things like, like real questions, like what is A&R? I didn’t really know what that was before, being in the middle of it. And also at that time streaming had been around for a while, but I think that period of time was really when Spotify had just launched in the U S, and it’s really starting to pick up; Apple music with launch just a year or two later. So, the whole conversation around like who the main players were in streaming was also changing pretty drastically at that time. So, timing also plays a huge role in my journey to where I got to now. So, it’s kind of through that. I realized I was interested in maybe applying like my academic interests on the staff side to more of a data analyst, or data-facing role in the music industry, whether that’s at a label streaming service, music startup, et cetera. So, did a handful of internships kind of in that world, did some academic research on the music business from a tech perspective. So, especially looking at music, startups, and I’m super randomly at a career fair that my friend dragged me to, I very serendipitously read into my first freelance gig. I happened to meet an e... | |||
| 21 Mar 2022 | 065: Brennan Dunn - Leveraging Automation To Get More Engagement and Sales | 01:02:23 | |
On today’s show I’m talking with Brennan Dunn. Brennan is a longtime friend. He's been around since the very early days of ConvertKit. He helped me review pull requests from our very first developers. These days Brennan is an expert in all things email marketing and automation. He’s fantastic at segmenting lists, personalizing content, using Liquid, and other advanced techniques to create a custom experience for subscribers. We talk about some of the ways you can gradually get into automation. We go over some examples of the advanced things Brennan does with Liquid and snippets to create custom experiences for subscribers. We also talk about how you can earn more money from email with these systems, and much more. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Brennan Dunn’s Links
| |||
| 20 Sep 2021 | 048: Ali Abdaal - Building Multiple Income Streams as a Content Creator | 01:12:25 | |
Ali Abdaal is a Doctor, writer, podcaster, entrepreneur, and YouTube sensation. Ali has grown his YouTube subscriber base to over 2 million, and writes a weekly newsletter titled Sunday Snippets. Sunday Snippets covers productivity tips, practical life advice, and the best insights from across the web. Ali studied medicine at Cambridge University. He worked as a Doctor in the United Kingdom before taking time off to explore his other interests. His YouTube channel covers medicine, tech, lifestyle, and productivity. Ali also co-hosts a weekly podcast with his brother, called Not Overthinking. After learning to code at age 12, Ali started doing freelance web design and development. He enjoys playing piano, guitar, and singing covers of mainstream pop songs. You can find occasional videos of Ali’s music prowess on his Instagram page. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources
Ali Abdaal’s Links
Episode Transcript You will change your life at the very least in terms of skills or connections or friends, or opportunities that will come your way as a result of posting consistently. [00:00:30] Nathan: He’s who all of my friends who are into YouTube turn to for advice. He’s got a paid course. He’s got a substantial email newsletter. He started out as a doctor and then has made the switch into a full-time YouTuber. So anyway, I’ll get out of the way, but, before we dive into the show, if you could do me a favor after the show: if you could go and subscribe on Spotify, iTunes, wherever you listen. That helps with downloads. If you could also write a review, I really appreciate it. Now it’s on to the show, with Ali. Ali, welcome to the show. [00:01:17] Ali: It was so good. Now we’re looking to do eBooks and things like that. Thank you for all the inspiration on that front. [00:01:46] Nathan: And now I’m watching a whole bunch of videos. And then of course we’ve been internet friends for, for awhile now. [00:02:08] Ali: [00:02:11] Nathan: What was the plan? Let’s start. [00:02:36] Ali: When I first decided to apply to med school, I’d been into the whole entrepreneurship thing since the age of 12. I learned to code. I started doing freelance web design and freelance web developer from age 13 onwards. So, in school, in high school, middle school, like we call it secondary school in the UK, I’d rush back home from school when I finished off my homework in record time, and then just be plugging away at like PHP or some HTML or some like jenky Java script. I used to make $5 here and there, and be like, yes, I’m, I’m making magical internet money. Every year when, when I was in, in high school, my friends and I would come up with a new business idea. So, we started this multi-level marketing thing and some other rando... | |||
| 05 Sep 2022 | 071: Turner Novak - Easy Ways to Ignite Your Audience Growth | 00:53:51 | |
The podcast is back! Today I’m talking with Turner Novak. Turner is someone I’ve followed for a long time. He has an amazing Twitter account where he drops hilarious memes, talks about life as an investor, and makes fun of venture capitalists and founders. He also posts deep dives on companies like Snapchat about how their earnings work, what’s going on in TikTok ads, and a lot more. It’s an interesting balance, and he does all this while investing in early-stage companies as a venture capitalist. In today’s episode Turner and I talk about how he creates content. We get into how he uses his funnel to raise capital, and how to generate the highest return on investment (ROI) for your audience. We also talk about how he grew to 130,000 followers on Twitter, why he failed to get a job in venture capital and had to start his own firm, and how to create a successful newsletter. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Turner’s Links & Resources (H5) | |||
| 27 Sep 2021 | 049: Jessica DeFino - Using Musicality and Rhythm To Dramatically Improve Your Writing | 00:55:34 | |
Jessica DeFino is a freelance beauty journalist living in Los Angeles, California. For the past seven years Jessica has been writing, researching, editing, and publishing about the beauty and wellness industry. Her work has appeared in Vogue, The Cut, Fashionista.com, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Business Insider, SELF, HelloGiggles, Harper's Bazaar, and more. Before starting her career as a freelance journalist, Jessica worked as a beauty writer for The Zoe Report. She was Director of Communications at Fame and Partners, and worked as a ghostwriter for Khloé Kardashian and Kendall Jenner. Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree in Music/Business Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music. Jessica’s music degree brings a unique perspective to her writing. It infuses each piece with lyrical qualities of storytelling, flow, and connection to her audience. Jessica also publishes a bi-monthly beauty newsletter called The Unpublishable, where she shares “What the beauty industry won’t tell you — from a reporter on a mission to reform it.” In this episode, you’ll learn about:
Links & Resources Jessica DeFino’s Links
Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Jessica: [00:00:34] Nathan: She’s taking a critical angle and she’s well loved by her readers because of it, but maybe not so loved by the big brands. We talk about how that came about. We talk about her writing style, her approach of using her background in song writing and going to school for songwriting to have a better, more interesting writing style. She gives some tips along that angle, talking about how she launched a newsletter last year and growing that to 9,000 subscribers. How that is a backbone for the rest of her work she does in journalism. It’s a great conversation. So, let’s dive in. Jessica, welcome to the show. [00:01:28] Jessica: [00:01:29] Nathan: [00:01:44] Jessica: The company severed ties with all of their freelancers and basically gave these four unpublished stories back to me, and gave me a kill fee. So it was like I had reported out these whole stories. I had spent months on them, and now I had nowhere to put them, and I gave it about a month of pitching it out to other alums. There weren’t any takers because media was in such a precarious position at the time. Finally I was like, maybe this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to launch a newsletter. and I decided to call it The Unpublishable because I couldn’t get anyone to publish this. And yeah, it’s been going, almost like every other week. [00:02:50] Nathan: [00:03:05] Jessica: [00:03:23] Nathan: [00:03:27] Jessica: As a beauty reporter, when I have to source images for the stories, I don’t want to just be showing white hands. If I’m writing about nail trends or whatever, and it would take me hours every week to comb through places and try to find the trend I was speaking to on a person of color. At one point, I was like, why is this happening and how come it’s so hard? This should not be hard. So, I wanted to do an investigation into it, and just like that the whole process had already taken six months. I was like, you don’t know what’s going to happen in this story. It might be scooped. It might be written by somebody else. It might be irrelevant in another month or so. So, I really wanted to get that out there, and that started it. [00:04:31] Nathan: How did you bring that to life and pull the audience together? [00:04:52] Jessica: And a couple of years prior, I had like tried starting ... | |||
| 07 Feb 2022 | 059: Samir Chaudry - Using YouTube To Launch Your Creator Enterprise | 01:03:04 | |
In this episode, I talked to Samir Chaudry. Samir is the co-host of the popular YouTube channel, Colin and Samir. He and his business partner, Colin Rosenblum, have built a really interesting enterprise. It’s been fun getting to know them. We talk about how they built and structure their entire business, and what drives revenue. Then we get into storytelling, and at the end we even talk about designing the perfect day, what’s driving growth on YouTube, and much more. They’ve got a show, they’ve got a newsletter, a bunch of different stuff. It’s a fun story of two people who were shining in a specific niche, took what they learned from that experience, and are serving the broader community with their knowledge and wisdom. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources Samir Chaudry’s Links
| |||
| 07 Mar 2022 | 063: Isa Adney - Free Up Creative Time Using Systems and Processes | 01:06:46 | |
On today’s show I talk to Isa Adney, a resident storyteller at ConvertKit. Isa came to ConvertKit as our webinar producer. You get to hear the arc of what she was doing before, how she joined the team, and how it morphed into her current role. Isa is very good at systems. She shares how she uses systems to free up time for creative activities. We also talk about reusing content, and how to create systems and flywheels to make one piece of content work across many platforms. In this episode, you’ll learn:
Links & Resources (H5)
Isa Adney’s Links (H5) | |||
| 10 Jul 2014 | 001: On Productivity | 00:21:56 | |
In January 2013 I wrote a series of goals for the year. One of them was “launch a podcast.” How does a goal like that take 18 months to be realized? Well, first I created all kinds of reasons that a podcast was much harder than it actually needed to be. Finally after recording episodes and working sporadically on it for over a year, I’m ready to launch! This first episode is a short book I wrote called The Productivity Manifesto. If you read my last post you know that productivity is something I’ve excelled at in the past, but am struggling with right now. So it seemed like a good topic to revisit for episode one. After listening please do me a huge favor and write a review on iTunes. Good reviews are critical to getting an audience for a brand new show. See you in the next episode!
| |||
| 11 Jul 2014 | 002: Email Marketing With Guests James Clear, Brennan Dunn, And Corbett Barr | 01:02:14 | |
Few things have paid off better in my business than a focus on email marketing. In building my list up to 18,000+ subscribers I’ve learned that email is the most profitable marketing channel around. Easily beating out Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. To learn more about email marketing I brought on three of my good friends: Brennan Dunn, James Clear, and Corbett Barr. All three have built highly profitable email lists in the last few years. Enjoy the episode! You can find each of their businesses (and subscribe to their lists) here:
Please go to iTunes and subscribe and write a review. It would really help me out! See you in the next episode!
| |||
| 12 Jul 2014 | 003: Profiting from teaching with Sean McCabe | 01:14:22 | |
Today I’ve got my absolute favorite product creation and launch story to share with you! Sean McCabe started as a web design consultant, then built up a following for his true passion: hand lettering. He then started teaching and grew a massive email list and then launched a training product. He shares the story and all the launch details (including exact revenue numbers) in this episode.
Here’s where you can find Sean on the web:
Here you can see the very first tshirt Sean sold in his store.
Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes. | |||
| 31 Jul 2014 | 004: Self-publishing with Justin Jackson, Sacha Greif, and Paul Jarvis | 01:06:47 | |
In August last year Sacha Greif and I put together a live event called The Self-Publishing Hangout. We brought on Paul Jarvis and Justin Jackson to round out our panel. You can watch a video of the event here, or checkout my podcast episode below.
Since recording that episode each of the guests have gone on to do amazing things. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email lists. Here’s where you can find them online: See you in part 2! | |||
| 25 Sep 2014 | 011: Eleven insights that changed my life | 00:36:09 | |
Nothing I do is completely original. In fact, so many ideas that people credit to me are originally from someone else. In this episode I want to give credit to the people who’ve provided some truly impactful ideas to the world. This is not a complete list by any means; I’m sure I’ve missed someone, so I plan to add to this list over time. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave a comment if you have something to add! Show Notes 1. Slow, consistent progress Lifehacker article on “Don’t break the chain” (Seinfeld said he didn’t come up with this, but I’m still going to believe he did :) 2. Writing 1,000 words per day Chris Guillebeau first introduced me to the idea of making consistent progress in order to actually finish a book. Here’s his post on the topic: How to Write 300,000 Words In 1 Year. 3. Writing to a pain Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman gave me a solid introduction to copywriting. Through plenty of direct feedback on my sales pages I learned all about writing to a particular pain in my headlines and copy. Amy and Alex go on to talk about the pain, dream, fix model of writing sales pages. You can find Amy & Alex here. I haven’t taken their course 30×500, but I’ve heard wonderful things about it. 4. Multiple packages An offhand comment by Chris Guillebeau has made me tens of thousands of dollars. 5. Selling digital products Tim Ferriss talks about drug dealers in 4HWW. 6. Making a living from self-publishing to a small audience Sacha Greif and Jarrod Drysdale showed me how it’s done. 7. Travel hacking Chris Guillebeau is the master of this hard-to-believe travel methodology. 8. Focusing on a few core products Jeff Goins, Laura Roeder, & Sacha Greif are excellent examples of this. 9. Syndicating content instead of guest posting James Clear taught me that your best content should appear on your own site. 10. Webinars to grow an audience Brennan Dunn, Danny Iny, Jeff Goins, & Brad Fallon taught me everything I know about how to run profitable webinars and joint ventures. 11. Email marketing ConvertKit Academy is something I built for authors who want to learn how to connect better with their audiences and apply email marketing best-practices so they can sell more books.
| |||
| 15 Aug 2014 | 005: Self-publishing with Justin Jackson, Sacha Greif, and Paul Jarvis (Part 2) | 00:47:34 | |
This is part two of the live event Sacha Greif and I put together in August of last year. As a reminder, you can watch a video of the event here, and you can listen to part one here if you missed it. Enjoy part two of The Self-Publishing Hangout! Sacha, Justin, and Paul are all super helpful, knowledgeable, and experienced in their respective fields. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email lists. Here’s where you can find them online: | |||
| 21 Aug 2014 | 006: Three habits for building a profitable audience | 00:08:48 | |
If you dream of selling your own products and creating a lifestyle of flexibility and independence, it’s going to be pretty tough to do that without an audience. Not only that, but that audience must be comprised of people who love what you do and have the financial means to pay you for solutions to their problems. There are many ways to build an audience, but very few of those methods lead to a profitable audience. In this short audio essay, I share with you three habits which helped me build an audience of amazing people – people who not only love what I do, but also get a ton of value from my products. They’ve been the key to my success, and if you build your audience the right way, it can be a game changer for you too. Enjoy this quick listen! Building a profitable audience takes time, and it can be a difficult process without guidance. Luckily I wrote an entire book about how to build a profitable audience from scratch – and how to create a valuable product you can sell to them. Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too. Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon. | |||
| 28 Aug 2014 | 007: DIY video with Caleb Wojcik | 01:09:59 | |
One of the most effective ways to show potential customers how your product could be useful to them is to feature it in a promo video. Well-made promo videos can be inspiring, insightful, and fun. The problem is, video can take a bit of time to learn how to do right. Luckily I have a good friend who runs his own video production studio. His name is Caleb Wojcik; you might know him from Fizzle, which he recently moved on from to run his studio full time. If there’s one person I’d recommend to take video production advice from it’s definitely Caleb. I recently asked him to hang out with me and talk video for an hour; we dug into gear, production techniques, and some sweet hacks to make your editing workflow quicker. This episode will be especially insightful if you’re thinking about making a promo video for your product. Enjoy! Show Notes Caleb Wojcik’s DIY Video Guide – if you’re getting into making promo videos for your business, I can’t recommend this guide enough. Caleb Wojcik’s gear guide – we talked a bit about gear, but it’s way too easy to waste time figuring out what gear to buy instead of actually making videos. Luckily Caleb’s done all the work for you in this free guide. Pat Flynn’s website – we mentioned our friend Pat a few times; here’s his site if you haven’t had a chance to see his work yet. Wistia’s “down and dirty” lighting kit – for less than $100 you can make your own professional lighting kit, my friends at Wistia show you how. Caleb and me hanging out – the live hangout this podcast recording is taken from. | |||
| 04 Sep 2014 | 008: Financial transparency | 00:20:57 | |
Why don’t people share financial numbers? In this twenty-minute audio essay I delve into some of the reasons why people are afraid to be financially transparent, and why I’ve chosen to ignore those reasons in favor of exposing my revenue numbers (and why you should too). Show Notes Sacha Grief – one of the people who’s inspired me most to start publishing books and be transparent about the process. Want to try something fun? Leave a comment below with a financial number you’re comfortable sharing. It could be anything from your latte budget to how much your most recent product launch made! | |||
| 11 Sep 2014 | 009: Authority success stories (part 1) | 00:34:50 | |
Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to make an independent living selling your expertise? In my book Authority I lay down an end-to-end plan for how to research, write, and publish a book to an excited and profitable audience so you can do just that. As it turns out, the methods I outline in Authority work extremely well for many people. Luckily I was able to get a few people who’ve had amazing success on a hangout; we talked for a while about their experiences publishing their first books (and earning very impressive revenues from them). Keep in mind that none of these talented folks had big audiences when they started. This is part 1 of a two part episode showcasing some of our most successful Authority customers. Hope you enjoy! Show Notes Build a Ruby Gem – the book Brandon Hilkert launched after reading Authority Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too. Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon. | |||
| 18 Sep 2014 | 010: Authority success stories (part 2) | 00:37:04 | |
In the previous part of this episode we met three talented people – Brandon, Samuel, & Jason. We chatted a bit about their successes with self-publishing and learned how they used my book Authority as a roadmap for creating and publishing their work. In this episode, we dig deeper into how each of these fine gentlemen came up with the topics for their books, dealt with technical challenges, and got the word out. They also share several ways in which their lifestyles improved as a result of their successes; you definitely don’t want to miss that section. Hope you enjoy! Show Notes Build a Ruby Gem – the book Brandon Hilkert launched after reading Authority Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too. Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon. | |||
| 13 Nov 2015 | 012: Building a Loyal Audience with Jason Zook | 00:55:16 | |
Wracking your brain trying to develop the best marketing campaign? When you think about it, marketing is really just big companies competing for attention. But I’m here to tell you about one of the biggest cheats these companies are missing out on. While they’re too busy fighting each other over a few seconds of everyone’s time, you can be working toward building an audience. That’s right, an audience. When you have an audience, you already have a group of people who want to pay attention to you! I’ve created this podcast to help those of us running our own businesses online build our audiences and our success. I’m talking about personal experiences, I’m bringing on guests who have used social media in unique and interesting ways, and I’m going to teach you how to build yourself an audience that goes beyond creating a simple email list. On today’s episode, I’ve invited Jason Zook to talk about how his audience helped build his brand and helped him succeed as an entrepreneur. “Building a really great audience that you have a conversation with is only going benefit everything that you’re doing tenfold,” Jason says on today’s show. And he offers advice on email marketing and building an online community that you can start using today in order to start that conversation. Along with his insights, this podcast is chock full of tips for:
Listen in and let us know what you think! Share your audience building tips, let me know what topics you want to hear about, and leave us a review on iTunes. This season of The Nathan Barry show is sponsored by Kajabi. Check out how you can create, market, and sell your own digital products through the power of the platform at Kajabi. And let them know that The Nathan Barry show sent you. | |||
| 13 Nov 2015 | 013: Why You Should Build a Personal Brand with Paul Jarvis | 01:05:43 | |
Today we’re sharing what sorts of things you should give away to build your brand and how to create them. Content is a great way to up your value and really fine tune your audience. There are a few important things to consider when picking an audience, and it’s important that you choose wisely. Strive to maintain a personal brand, instead of a subject-based brand; that way, even if you deviate, you’ve created an audience that follows you. Paul Jarvis dives into his biggest mistakes when trying to begin a career in writing, why he ended up releasing a vegan cookbook, and the success story behind it. He shares a lot of great information with us today, including:
We wrap it up by talking about the importance of over delivering now to get great results later, how we batch our content and articles, and how Paul used Medium and Amazon to boost his articles to the number one spot. Paul has distributed over 100,000 copies of his book “Everything I Know”, and currently has about 25,000 e-mail subscribers. He’s been crazy successful, and was happy to share a wealth of tips and advice with us today from his journey. Links and resources:
Be sure to check out Paul’s stuff, and if you have a minute, I would really appreciate if you would write a review on iTunes about today’s episode. Whether it’s good or bad, let us know what you think by posting a review in iTunes. This season of The Nathan Barry show is sponsored by Kajabi. Check out how you can create, market, and sell your own digital products through the power of the platform at Kajabi. And let them know that The Nathan Barry show sent you. | |||
| 19 Nov 2015 | 014: Consistently Deliver Value to your Audience with Brennan Dunn | 00:49:45 | |
As a professional freelancer, Brennan Dunn knows the ins and outs of creating an audience and a viable client list. His style of content creation and content marketing has been a huge influence on my own business style. He first started by writing a business blog about the conversations he was having with his own customers as an ingenious way to get new customers and build his email list. This pro-active approach to business, including writing and publishing an e-book, creating his own content, and using paid acquisition through Facebook, is what he’s talking about with us today. You can apply his insight to your own marketing plans to develop something that works for you. Brennan has probably had a bigger on impact on the way I do online business more than anyone else.Brennan has built an audience by communicating with them regularly: regular emails promoting new/regular blogs, direct conversations, free advice, promotionals – Brennan pre-sold his e-book to his Planscope emailing list. He also offers a range of products to better serve your clients that results in more income for you. Topics We Discuss
Contact Subscribe to Brennan’s list at www.freepricingcourse.com Learn more about Brennan and his insights on freelancing doubleyourfreelancing.com If you have a minute, I would really appreciate if you would write a review on iTunes about today’s episode. Whether it’s good or bad, let us know what you think by posting a review in iTunes. This season of The Nathan Barry show is sponsored by Kajabi. Check out how you can create, market, and sell your own digital products through the power of the platform at Kajabi. And let them know that The Nathan Barry show sent you. | |||
| 26 Nov 2015 | 015: Let Your Brand Take Center Stage with Ruben Gamez | 00:53:00 | |
Ruben Gamez is here to tell us how you can stand back and let your work and your products speak for your brand. He is the creator and lead marketer for his website BidSketch.com, but you’d never know it. He and his team put together professional business proposal templates for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to find work and build a business online, but you won’t see him speaking at conferences or selling on tv spots. That’s because he prefers for his business – his tool – to speak for itself. Find out how he built his audience through his own specially designed content marketing campaign, and how he designed a product that practically sells itself. Topics Discussed
Resources Check out ConvertKit.com/blog for conversion tips and tricks Get a proposal template from Ruben at bidsketch.com Follow along with all of the great things Ruben is putting together @bidsketch and follow him personally @earthlingworks on Twitter. | |||